St Mary’s food waste composting initiative is run in conjunction with local Meals on Wheels services, Heather House nursing home situated on the St Mary’s Health Campus, the health Actions Zone and Churchfield Community Trust. 

This project aims to reuse food waste from local community groups thereby reducing what goes into landfill and repurposing it into a valuable nutritious compost for growing the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers within the many garden areas on the campus. 

The food waste is collected weekly from the various partners by e bike and trailer and emptied into the specialist RIDAN composters. These are an in-vessel composting system, that transforms food waste, including meat and dairy, into rich compost. The RIDAN units are heavily insulated and designed to generate high temperatures to safely compost all food waste materials and are turned manually to aerate the contents and to speed up the composting process. The initial composting process takes around 6 weeks and the composted waste is then placed into maturation bins to further compost and mature ready for use. 

The resulting compost is fine and rich and can be used for growing a wide range of vegetables, which can then be distributed through the community, making this a truly circular system. 

Vegetables grown so far this season in the RIDAN compost include strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes and pumpkins, cabbages, kale and broccoli. 

Over the winter compost produced will be used to prepare our vegetable beds for next season as we expand our production, and reduce our costs by having our own supply of rich nutritious compost ‘on tap’ in the garden.