The Highland Community Waste Partnership ran between April 2022 – March 2025. Funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, this project brough together eight community groups in the Highlands to reduce waste and promote more sustainable consumption. To learn more about the project visit: www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highlandcommunitywaste.
All the information on these pages was correct until the end of the Highland Community Waste Partnership project i.e. 31st March 2025, but is unlikely to be updated following that.
Home Composting
We continued to develop support for home composting, including updating our “How to Compost” guide to help you start composting at home. This guide is based on “cold” composting but gives a little information about other composting options. You can download the booklet and print a copy out. The booklet was originally made for our home composting starter scheme, and has been updated in conjunction with Transition Black Isle and MOO Foods. The image below shows the basics of “Greens” and “Browns” that you will need for composting, along with what you should avoid when cold composting.
There are some great links at the end of the brochure for more information on composting and also some for how to make your own compost bins at home.
Compost Bins
Following the end of the HCWP, we still have a number of compost bins available to households in Lochaber, with the aim of helping households to reduce food waste sent to landfill whilst making compost for your garden. To find out more about our compost bins please contact us on info@lochaberenviro.org.uk or ring the office on 01397 700090.
Please see image of an online map below which shows the distribution of home compost bins through the HCWP project. We provided a fantastic 249 compost bins across the 3 years.
The map links to the online / updated version if you click on it. The different colours relate to bins distributed during the different years of the project.
From information gathered during our end of project compost bin survey we calculated that the average household is composting 2.54Kg of food waste per week. Extrapolating this against the compost bins provided over years 1, 2 and 3 give a total of 74 Tonnes of food waste composted over the project lifetime.
Going forward if all the bins distributed continue to compost food waste at the average weight this will lead to 32.9 Tonnes of food waste a year being diverted from residual waste. How great is that!
Spotlight on…..
Sarah Jane Boles joined us at one of our composting courses in 2022, click on the photo for information of her story and what happened next.
When asked what she enjoys the most about home composting, Sarah said:
“I love being able
to recycle and make the most of nature’s resources”
Sarah’s advice to others is:
“Composting is fun and rewarding. Do it.”
