A COMMUNITY COMPOSTING SCHEME

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It all began in the millennium year with Pauline’s good fortune to win a competition sponsored by Earthwatch to visit America to take part in chimpanzee studies. This is a separate story in its own right and you will find more of this elsewhere in the site. The outcome was a commitment to ‘think globally and act locally’.

With this simple target our heroine returned to the Pennine village of Oxenhope in West Yorkshire with lots of confidence and one small idea. She would set up a village compost scheme to collect useful kitchen waste that otherwise went to the growing problem of today – the infamous ‘land infill’. Her reasoning was simple – if the idea helped reduce the amount of waste going into the dustbin, she helped reduce the problem of landfill and would make something useful from household waste.

Kitchen Waste into Compost (KWIC) was created one morning in April 2000 in the most appropriate of places – around the kitchen table - and with the help of two of her daughters, Alison and Jennifer, ideas were crunched, plans drawn up and information compiled.  A site was found, Council permission obtained, a work team formed, donor supporters signed up and funds for material and equipment promised.

Within 3 months the first collection round was made and the compost process began.

For the original team of Dave, Teresa and Pauline, the early stages brought hard work and a few disappointments but with the set backs and victories came a lot of fun; it is really enjoyable to see the project grow and create something useful from ‘just rubbish’.

We had support from a lot of people and our thanks go to:

• Manorlands for the donation of land

• Bradford Environmental Action Trust (BEAT)

• British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV)

• Yorkshire Water for their initial financial support

• Skipton Property Holdings for their help with material and site development

• Caravan Rescue Insurance

• Goose Eye Brewery

• Rotary Club of Haworth

• Robert and Lady Pamela Goring

• Tony & David Williams for the loan of their pick-up after our van was written off

• ...and our sincere thanks are extended to everyone who has helped – small and great

Come to see our site on ground beyond the top car park at Manorlands Hospice, Oxenhope and see how well things have developed. From small beginnings we now take about ½ ton of kitchen waste each collection, use mechanical and manual composters and now want mechanical movers to take on the manual hard work of moving the waste. It’s not too smelly a job (although the waste hops has a certain attraction) and the end result is great for your garden.

We hope you enjoy our website and can make time to contact us to say hello.