Waste | Transition Town Lewes

The Waste group is currently inactive. If you would like to start a new waste group, please contact us. There is plenty of support available to anyone starting a new group.

The Waste group’s vision for Lewes in 20 years time is that we try to produce as little waste as possible and deal with as much as we can locally. This means that everything that’s recyclable is recycled (from building waste to yoghurt pots) and everything that’s compostable is composted, and that attitudes change so we reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place.

They know there’s a way to go before the vision is achieved and they’re working on plans to get there.

Food waste
This is one of the waste streams that is not being tackled to any degree by agencies locally and the Waste group are giving it some priority.

Rocket project
In particular, the group were concerned about food waste from businesses in Lewes. They thought it was an area where they could raise awareness and make an impact. Read more… (link)

Green Johanna project
To help reduce the amount of domestic food waste going to landfill, the group ran a project until April 2011 to encourage people in Lewes to use Green Johanna composters which take all food waste, including cooked foods. Unfortunately due to cuts by the County Council, this project has had to be stopped.

A pilot project completed in August 2009 was run by a member of the group to encourage households in Hawkenbury Way, on the Nevill, to compost their food waste using Green Johannas (read more here…). We obtained funding by the County Council for purchase of Green Johannas and kitchen caddies and our “master composter” found neighbours to try it out and gave them help and advice, if they needed it. We felt it was a very successful pilot and carried on by rolling this out further in other streets in Lewes. The County Council supported the project but due to County Council cuts we have had to shelve the project.

Waste Awareness Days
The group has also done several food waste awareness displays about food waste (eg at Tesco and the precinct) with the Food group.

There’s more…
They still have many more practical ideas they would like to pursue given time and energy. However, there are few people in the Waste group and they need more support – so please think about joining them!

Contact: Jon Gunson

Further reading

The Rocket Project
The project involves collecting food waste from pubs, restaurants, shops and possibly institutions such as schools and composting it in a rocket composter (read more here…). This project has been taken up by the County Council and Furniture Now with European Funding. A rocket composter has been installed at County Hall and is being trialled there. Hopefully in 2010 we shall be able to approach local businesses to invite them to send their food waste to be composted at County Hall.

The Master Composting Pilot Project
A pilot project completed in August 2009 was run by a member of the group to encourage households in Hawkenbury Way, on the Nevill, to compost their food waste using Green Johannas (read more here…). We obtained funding by the County Council for purchase of Green Johannas and kitchen caddies and our “master composter” found neighbours to try it out and gave them help and advice, if they needed it. We felt it was a very successful pilot and are aiming to roll this out further in other streets in Lewes. Anyone who would like to run a simple project like this in their street is very welcome to contact us and we can provide help to get it started. We have support from both the County Council and District Council and Lewes Little Gardens.

Further ideas for projects:
Some of the things we want to tackle are how we can further raise consumer awareness of food waste both at home and in restaurants, takeaways and pubs; getting takeaways to use compostable containers.

There are other projects that we discussed at the outset which we would still like to pursue such as:

what would convince people to use washable nappies and stop using disposable ones

how can we make it easy for businesses in Lewes to recycle their waste

can we extend the types of plastics we can recycle

what we can do with all the waste we produce by making our homes more energy efficient such as what we should do with our old inefficient light bulbs and fridges