Composting

Composting

Composting is a natural way to recycle. Instead of putting all of your grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, fruit skins and vegetable peelings into the dustbin, they can be turned into a nutrient rich compost for the garden. Some areas of Hampshire offer garden waste sacks, in which grass cuttings and hedge trimmings can be collected, whilst in other areas, green waste can be taken to the local Household Waste Recycling Centre, where it is then taken to a composting site to be made into soil conditioner called ‘Pro Grow’.

There is however, a much more simple way of disposing of your green waste and that is to have your very own compost bin. You can purchase or build compost bins and if you are composting at home or at school, there are lots of things you can put into the mix. Have you tried: egg shells, tea bags, coffee grounds, paper towels, newspaper, fruit and vegetable peelings? They all make excellent ingredients for adding to your compost and lessen the amount of rubbish going into your dustbin!

Fact The average person throws away 74kg of organic waste every year. That’s the equivalent of 1077 banana skins!

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Why not go on a Minibeast Hunt to fi nd some of Nature’s recyclers?

As all keen recyclers and gardeners will know, composting our green waste requires a little help from our friends; the creepy-crawly types! Mini beasts live in all sorts of habitats and have a very specifi c role to play. They are often the Primary Consumers in food chains, providing food for the fi rst level of predators like birds and small mammals, but they are also nature’s cleaners; tidying up the dead and decomposing material and helping to make fresh and fertile soil for new growth.

Within each type of mini beast habitat there will be recyclers and predators. The recyclers will be those mini beasts which move slowly and munch their way through leaves and fruit (worms, ants, slugs, snails, woodlice), the predators will move quickly and will only be living in the habitat to feed on the recyclers! (Spiders, beetles, centipedes)

Take the children outside and have a look for some mini beasts. Do a mini survey of the mini beasts you fi nd.

l Where do they live?

l What are the conditions like?

l What type of mini beasts did you fi nd and are they recyclers?

l Which mini beasts would you want to come and live in a compost heap?

The children could also consider how the mini beasts have adapted to their environment and how they have evolved to prevent themselves being gobbled up by something else!

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Composting

A recipe for composting in the classroom

Ingredients

2 cups of fruit and vegetable peelings

1 cup of leaves and grass cuttings

2 cups of your fi nest school soil

1 cup of newspaper or paper towels torn into small pieces

Equipment

1 two litre pop bottle

1 permanent marker

1 pair of scissors

Sticky tape

An old spoon or small trowel

Spray bottle of water

Method:

1 Take the pop bottle and carefully using the scissors cut around the bottle 3⁄4 of the way to the top. Do not cut all the way round, but leave 2-3cm, so that the top of the bottle will become a fl ip lid.

2 Open the fl ip lid of the bottle and spoon in the ingredients in the following order

Continue overleaf

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1cm of soil

3cm thickness of fruit peelings

1cm of soil

All of the grass and leaf mixture

1cm of soil

All of the torn up newspaper and paper towels

1cm of soil

3cm thickness of fruit peelings

1cm of soil

3 Once all the layers have been added, you may need to give the surface a quick spray of water – this can be done throughout the experiment as and when the surface starts to feel dry.

4 Seal up the bottle using sticky tape, then using the marker, draw small lines to mark the different layers on the outside of the bottle.

Over the next three weeks keep a close eye on the bottle. You could keep daily records of the temperature and changes to the levels inside the bottle. You may even start to grow types of mould and bacteria – other useful recyclers!!

Sourced from the Gould League, Australia

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Composting

Woolly Worms

Woolly Worms is a great activity to explain food chains, camoufl age and the need to dispose of hazardous waste responsibly.

1 Cut up 10 lengths of six different colours of wool: Brown, Green, Yellow, Blue, Red and Orange.

2 Find an outside location and distribute the ‘worms’ across the area, some in the trees, some on the fl oor and some in the bushes.

3 Ask the children to get into pairs. Each pair will be a mother and father blue tit and must build a nest using fallen twigs and leaves (remember to tell the children not to pick living plants).

4 The blue tits have 10 hungry chicks to feed. They must run and get worms for their babies, but can only pick up one worm at a time using their beaks (thumb and fi rst fi nger).

5 Shout Ready Steady Go, and watch as all the worms are collected and the children become exhausted!

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6 When all the worms have been taken to the nests, ask the children to count up the number of each coloured worm they have.

l Brown, Green and Yellow Worms are tasty worms. These worms may have been slightly harder to fi nd, as they have adapted to their environment and use camoufl age to hide themselves from predators

l Red worms represent many insects that display bright colours such as the cinnabar moth. The colours warn predators that they will not taste very nice and may be poisonous. These worms will result in the chicks feeling very poorly. Remove all the red worms.

l Blue worms represent slugs that have been killed using slug pellets. These slugs will now be poisonous. Remove all blue worms from the worm pile and lose one chick per blue worm due to poisoning.

l Orange worms have been poisoned by hazardous waste that has been dumped in the local area. This may include other insecticides, drain cleaners, wood preservatives or antifreeze canisters. Remove all Orange worms and lose one chick per orange worm due to poisoning.

7 Ask the children to count their total number of worms following deductions and the number of chicks they have left – who made the best mother and father blue tits? Remind the children of the importance of disposing of hazardous waste correctly and the consequences not doing so can have on the environment.

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Composting

Worms are amazing recyclers. At night time worms wiggle up to the surface to fi nd food. They anchor their tails and then reach out around their holes searching for leaves and other organic matter. Once they have found something tasty they drag it back into their burrows and slowly munch through it. Having passed through the worm, the material is then further decomposed by bacteria and fungi within the soil. Worms also help to aerate the soil, by creating tunnels and slowly mixing the soil with the new decomposed material.

What happens beneath the surface?

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Composting

Who wants to go to the Compost Bin Ball?

Ask the children to choose one mini beast to invite to the Compost Bin Ball! The children should draw, create a model or act out their creature going to the ball. You might want to create an invitation to invite the mini beast to the ball, and think about how would you describe the location of the ball, and what sort of food would each mini beast request?

You might also like to get the children thinking about who might be the guest of honour! Compost bins are not only great places for mini beasts, but also make great homes for other wildlife. Their warm, damp conditions make them an ideal spot for many reptiles to hide and keep warm, you could expect to see the occasional slow worm or even a grass snake. Grass snakes also choose compost heaps to lay their eggs, as they make ideal incubators. Although slow worms and grass snakes would make impressive guests of honour to a compost ball, you may end up with very few other guests!

This could make a great wall display or even an assembly to teach the rest of the school about composting and mini beasts.

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