Fuming about seeds.

Like a lot of home gardeners, I grow a lot of traditional, open pollinated varieties, I save my own seed and buy heritage varieties from small seed companies like RealSeeds, MoreVeg and Kokopelli. I am also a member of HSL, Garden Organic's seed saving, membership organisation. I grow lots of different veg and find the diversity of seeds on offer to be very helpful in the changeable weather conditions we often experience, here in the UK. I also find they taste so much better than "ordinary" varieties.

The tomatoes pictured  in my Lammas post are a good example!

But according to leading organic charities Garden Organic and the Soil Association, the choice of what crops are available for gardeners to grow has been dealt yet another restrictive blow,

"In a recent ruling in the European Court of Justice in Brussels(1) a small French seed company, seeking to defend its sales of old unregistered varieties of vegetables, lost its case. The company, Kokopelli, argued that the basis of the EU Marketing Directive was unlawful and curtailed the right to trade seed freely. However the court opposed this and ruled in favour of the current legislation, which restricts what seed can and cannot be marketed and sold."

Read the full article here 

I suspect quite a few of the seeds I buy to grow will no longer be available to me after this ruling.

As Garden Organic and the Soil Association so rightly point out, every variety lost weakens our ability to create an effective food system that can cope with the increasing challenges of climate change and resource scarcity.”

Bob Sherman, Chief Horticultural Officer at Garden Organic said,

“It is disappointing that the EU has neglected to unravel this controversial Directive to give amateur gardeners freedom of choice. Very few people believe that trade in traditional and endangered varieties threatens the commercial seed world. Despite some recent slackening of the regulation of ‘amateur’ and ‘conservation’ varieties, it appears it is still possible for large corporate businesses to control the market with no hesitation in resorting to law against the minnows of the sector. Fortunately Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library is not a seed company and we will continue to work at protecting the availability of many ‘at risk’ varieties by allowing our supporters access to seeds.”

I think this is a serious mistake on the part of the EU. I am not quite sure who to complain to about this - but surely there must be something we can do?

What do you all think?

Oh! Such joy ( well a new recycling scheme, anyway.....!)

Today we had an unexpected delivery. A new Recycling Bin!

You may remember my previous rants on the subject of recycling , in which I mention that we don't get any doorstep collection out here in the wilds of rural Herefordshire.

But,Herefordshire has now decided to extend the scheme to ALL its residents so everybody gets some recyclables collected from their home. (Well, it, and all Councils, are now legally obliged to do so ,
by legislation I helped to campaign for! )

As an Environmental Consultant and activist I also spent a huge amount of time in the late nineties vigorously campaigning to stop the building of an Incinerator in the town of Kidderminster. This was meant to "dispose" of a large chunk of Herefordshire and Worcestershire's joint household waste. I rather suspect that IF they had managed to build this incinerator I would not now be feeling so happy as "Energy Recovery" from the incinerator would have counted as "recycling". So, I guess, there would have been no Big Green Recycling Bin sitting outside my back door?

But we won the fight against the Kidderminster Incinerator (hurrah) and the Incinerator plan "went up in smoke". And lo, I have a Recycling Bin.

Here it is in all its glory...




along with a calendar, a handy leaflet telling us what we can put in our bin and a sticker to go on the front of the bin.

Here is a list of the items that you will now be able to recycle from your home:

Paper - including newspapers, magazines, phone directories, catalogues, office paper, junk mail, greetings cards and envelopes.
Cardboard - light card and corrugated cardboard, egg boxes and kitchen/toilet roll tubes.
Metals - food tins and drinks cans, aerosol cans and sweet/biscuit tins.
Glass - bottles and jars of all colours.
Plastic - all plastic bottles. Plastic containers including yogurt pots, margarine/ice cream tubs, fruit/vegetable punnets, cream/ custard pots, cake/pastry trays and soup/sauce pots.
Cartons – including milk, juice, smoothie cartons, fabric conditioner, soup, chopped tomato and custard cartons.

So...finally .....we have a recycling bin at Compost Mansions and we can stop filling up our car boots with recyclable stuff "just in case" we go near a recycling point.

We will still need to go to the Household Recycling Site with textiles, batteries, CF lights, wood, electrical goods, soil and rubble etc, but this bin will make SUCH a difference to us! Apart from anything else, the bottles, cans etc can go in the bin, outside, rather than filling up boxes in the boiler room, or in my car boot!

Also the 100g (ish) of landfill waste that we do put out each week at the moment for the landfill collection (all else is reused, recycled or composted here) is largely yogurt or margarine cartons, so we will now be able to reduce the stuff we send to landfill even more, maybe even down to a true Zero Waste level! Previously the recycling system would not take these items, but the building of a new Materials Reclamation Facility has changed all that. |

All collected recycling will be transferred to a new material recovery facility (MRF) being built at Norton, Worcestershire. This new facility will sort materials using state of the art technology into their different types ready for recycling.

So, we will be able to put these items inside our lovely new recycling bin!

Hurrah! I am a very happy Compostwoman, today! Good on you Herefordshire Council, for doing this...!

Meeting The Green family and a Zero Waste Roadshow

On Friday Compostman and I went over to nearby Newent to visit the Zero Waste Week roadshow in Budgens supermarket ( and do a bit of shopping as Budgens in Newent have lots of nice stuff and carry a huge range of local, organic foods)

AND to meet up with The Green family from My Zero Waste!

They are a lovely family! We all had a general chat then Mrs Green and I nattered ninteen to the dozen about waste, recycling, composting and so on (as you do) and Compostman and I gave Little Miss Green some eggs from "the girls" before we all parted.

We all then chatted to the wonderful people on the Gloucestershire CC Zero Waste Week roadshow

Here are Mrs Green and Aunty Rubbish!



Aunty Rubbish is the lovely lady on the Zero Waste Roadshow.

and then we talked composting ( well there's a surprise....)


here we are talking about composting!



Zero Waste Challenge Week 2009 is a really good idea, This is what they are asking Gloucestershire residents to do

Zero Waste Challenge Week 2009


Want to play a part in something new and exciting?

Sign up to our Zero Waste Challenge and help Gloucestershire reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill.

Zero Waste Challenge Week is all about reducing the amount of waste you throw away in your dustbin in one week. The week will be held week commencing the 26th January to the 1st February 2009.

Zero Waste means that nothing gets thrown away in the dustbin. As well as trying to cut down what we use, it also means that we try to only use things that we can reuse, recycle or compost. That way we’re left with nothing else to throw away in the bin.

We believe that if you make enough changes, it is possible to achieve a Zero Waste Week. However, the aim of the challenge is to see how close you can get. Circumstances are different for everyone and even if you don’t quite manage to achieve Zero Waste, you will find that you have a dramatic effect on the amount you throw away.

So, if you are reading my blog and you live in Gloucestershire, why not join in? You get some lovely goodies and you might win a prize!

Well done to all who have signed up and here’s hoping more than 1000 people have already joined!

I am most impressed with the Zero Waste Week stuff, just a shame I can’t sign up (wrong postcode) but I am working on my Council (Herefordshire) to do the same.
We are doing our own personal version of Zero Waste Week, as we started weighing our landfill bin again at the start of 2009, we haven’t done it for a bit and it is something that you have to keep an eye on, or “stuff” starts to slip in again and before you know it your bin has has put on weight. So far we are pleased with our continued efforts. I will post more on this at a future date.

So, anyway, a good day out for Compostman and I, we went to a nice nearby market town, met some lovely, like minded people ( you are lovely, Green family!) did some shopping, visited a roadshow, and then had lunch in the pub in Dymock.

A very satisfying sort of day.

Go-ahead for new Heathrow runway

I know I am supposed to be getting on with my Forest School portfolio, but I HAD to post about this!

Go-ahead for new Heathrow runway

Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has announced government approval for a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport.The plan is for a new runway, allowing the annual number of take-offs and landings to increase to 605,000 by 2020 and 720,000 by 2030 - up from 480,000 today. The development would result in the loss of around 700 homes, including the entire community of Sipson and Heathrow Primary School.

According to Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government, the runway would over time come to be seen as a 'white elephant'. Long before investment in it were repaid, demand for flying will have fallen away as pressure to reduce carbon increases and competition with other forms of travel grows. The downturn is already forcing people to find substitutes for air travel. This pattern will continue, he suggests.

A Greater London Authority (GLA) report suggested Heathrow would even now breach the EU regulations on levels of Nitrous Oxide due to come into force in 2010. Extra flights would only make this worse.

Even the Environment Agency admits that with a third runway, Heathrow would breach these limits.

The GLA study also found that the airport would breach noise pollution limits as a result of the extra flights.

Heathrow generates 50% of UK aviation emissions. This makes 6% of total emissions, according to Department for Transport figures.

A third runway could mean an extra 200,000 flights a year over London.

Why should aviation capacity be increased indefinitely? When will those in power wake up to the realities of Climate Change? Why should you or I have our lives blighted by the effects of Climate Change, why should poor souls in pacific islands or Bangladesh or wherever be flooded out of their homes by rising sea water?

Greenpeace are asking people to contact the Prime Minister, via their website, and express their opinion.

I have just done so.

Want to join me?


love, Compostwoman x

Join the Greenpeace airplot owners party!

I've signed up

Have you?

Greenpeace say

we're now the proud owners of a small piece of land within the site of the proposed third runway at Heathrow.

We're expecting the government will announce that they're going ahead with expansion at Heathrow this week and we now need you to join us. Sign up now to get your own piece of the plot. It's not a financial thing, but you will be included as an owner on the legal deed of trust.

5000 people, and counting! So why not join Greenpeace, Alistair McGowan, Emma Thompson, Zac Goldsmith and a hell of a lot of other folk to stop dangerous Climate Change madness.

REQUEST FOR HELP! URGENT WASTE CONSULTATION DOCUMENT!

I don't know how many of you spotted recently an article in The Telegraph , or read about it on The Recycle Works blog, but there are a set of proposals out for consultation from DEFRA about waste management exemptions. BUT they also have serious implications for charity, not for profit and school composting operations!

This is from their website.

Defra, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Environment Agency are undertaking a review of the waste exemptions from environmental permitting. The aim of the review is to provide a more risk based and proportionate approach to the regulation of waste recovery and disposal operations, complementing the new environmental permitting regime. The consultation includes a number of proposed measures aimed at increasing the use of exemptions for as wide a range as possible of low risk activities (including most of those operating under an Environment Agency low risk position) whilst removing or restricting the availability of the exemptions for higher risk waste operations by seeking to regulate higher risk operations through one or more standard permits. The consultation also seeks views on a partial impact assessment and a draft set of regulations.

At the moment there are lots of different exemptions to do with small scale handling of waste, which are applied to charities/not for profit bodies in their activities.

One of the many things contained in these proposals is a plan for everybody who handles any kind of waste under an exemption from licencing etc at the moment, to register for an exemption to their waste operations AND pay a fee for doing so.

This would include charitable and not for profit bodies.

Composting is a waste activity which is either licenced (if done on a BIG scale by business) or classed as exempt at the moment.

Home composting of domestic compostable waste will still be fine and is not apparently part of this consultation.

BUT these new proposals suggest a registration scheme for everybody else, with a fee payable, for ANY activity which is exempt, renewable every three years.

So potentially that means the composting bins at a school could have to apply to be exempted AND pay a fee (suggested at £50, apparently) so as to do composting.

I think this is a bit silly!

I have sent in a comment, I add it in below and please feel free to copy it and use it with what ever amendments you wish...

My name is ************ ; I am a keen organic gardener and home composter.

I am also a Master Composter (a volunteer Community Composter advisor) working with my local council and Garden Organic. This scheme, as you are aware, is co promoted and supported by WRAP, a government sponsored and funded body.

I also volunteer to help and advise at a local school in their organic garden, where the children, teachers and I make a lot of compost as part of our gardening activities. Composting is also a big part of many schools activities to gain their Green Flag award with the Eco Schools movement.

I am therefore VERY concerned that there are proposals to make schools, charities and not for profit groups register and pay to be exempt from the new regulations being considered in this consultation.

This seems to me to be a very shortsighted idea. Composting is being promoted and compost bins and wormeries offered at discount prices by Councils and WRAP as a means of diverting compostable material from landfill. In many areas schools receive free compost bins, wormeries and advice. To therefore suggest a charge be levied on such activities is frankly NOT " joined up thinking" in my opinion.

A charge or even registration may well put off charities or not for profit bodies from starting new composting schemes OR cause then to halt existing ones. Schools and many small charities have no funds to pay for such a charge; indeed why should they be expected to?

I hope that you will reconsider this aspect of the proposed regulations and exempt not for profit organisation (including schools) and charities from having to register and pay for an exemption.


Yours faithfully

*********** B.Eng. (Hons)

PLEASE everyone, it is NOT too late to respond to the consultation which contains this proposal!

The deadline WAS 23 Oct but apparently submissions WILL be accepted until the end of Oct (according to an email I have recieved from the Community Composting Network...)

So , IF you want to know more go to this site to read the full consultation document.

It DOESN'T just cover composting but ALL waste activities!

If you want to have sight of the Community Composting Network's response to DEFRA, see here for their full reply to the proposals.......

and if you want to submit a comment email exemptions@defra.gsi.gov.uk before the end of Oct or a.s.a.p.

PLEASE! We NEED to act on this NOW!