Garden waste

Home composting is an easy way to reduce your household waste. Even better, it produces a rich, free compost for your garden, which may save you buying specialist fertiliser.

Most food and garden waste can be composted at home. If you leave organic material like grass cuttings, prunings, dead plants and food waste (fruit, vegetables, tea bags and egg shells) in a compost bin, it will rot down into a rich compost.

Home composting helps reduce the environmental impact and cost of managing this waste in our recycling centres.

Traditional compost bin heaps can also be used to compost garden waste at home by having a dedicated area in your garden for your compost heaps.

How to compost at home

You can make compost in a compost bin, or using a dedicated area of your garden to make a compost heap.

To make a good quality compost you need the right mix of compostable materials, roughly a mix of half 'green' materials and half 'brown' materials.

Green compost materials

Green compost materials rot quickly, are rich in nitrogen and provide moisture to the compost heap. 

Green compost materials include:

• grass cuttings
• leftovers and peelings from fruit
• vegetable peelings
• tea bags
• coffee grounds
• annual weeds
• old flowers
• rhubarb leaves
• nettles
• comfrey leaves
• egg shells

Brown compost materials

Brown compost materials are slower to rot and rich in carbon. They form air pockets in the compost mixture to help the organisms living there breathe, and they provide fibre. 

Brown compost materials include;

• branches
• twigs
• crushed egg boxes
• scrunched up cardboard and newspaper
• toilet roll tubes

Composting advice 

Zero Waste Scotland has an easy guide to composting at home.

BBC Gardening has a guide to making your own compost.