Alba, composter, Newtown

Alba is a composter in Newtown. Alba keeps her compost bin in her front yard and while at first she found composting a bit tricky she quickly got the hang of adding moisture and regularly stirring it to keep it healthy and pest free.

"I’ve had the compost bin for nearly two and a half years. Initially it was really hard. It wasn’t really working but then I read you had to water them every once in a while if it was really dry and ever since then it’s been going great. Before that it just wouldn’t decompose. It started smelling and it had lots of fruit flies, so it was just rotting.

During the heat wave it was getting worse, and I thought “hey maybe I will water it” and it just started getting really hot and actually composting.

Now it’s doing fine. I’m going to harvest it in spring for my garden beds.

I’ve got a little bucket and I just put everything in, egg shells, lemon. I just put everything in and it seems to be fine. We put our normal red bin out once every two or three weeks. Or maybe we have one bag of rubbish and that’s it. We also joined a food coop so we don’t get the packaging which is another big thing. But you definitely notice less waste with the compost and you don’t feel as terrible if something is forgotten at the back of the fridge. You think “oh ok that can go in the compost”. I also like that you can put bamboo toothbrushes in. 

Once in a while I see a cockroach in there but that’s it. Once I got the hang of it, it was super easy. I just stir it once in a while. It doesn’t smell so neighbours are fine with it.

I want to reduce household waste for environmental reasons, we try to eat all our scraps and leftovers anyway, but everything else goes into the compost. The other thing is for my garden, I like gardening a lot so it’s good for both."