Municipal Compost Station

At the beginning of the year France introduced a new environmental law which means it is forbidden to dispose of kitchen waste in your regular household waste that the garbage men collect. Kitchen waste must be composted and if you don't have a garden you have to take your waste to the municipal compost station. 

 

The compostmobile. Or maybe it's the compost bus.

Municipalities all over France scrambled to provide this new service to their residents, but compostors and materials to make compostors very quickly became impossible to source. At the beginning of the year the council workers prepared a small yard in an alleyway in the centre of town, in readiness for when the compostors would arrive.

 

Morgan and his compost bins.

Then in mid-July I went to the market and there was a compostmobile parked to one side, and a bloke from the Comcom* with a stall trying to enthuse everyone about compost. We got chatting and I got invited to the inauguration of the new compost bins which have finally been installed. 

 

What can and can't be included in your kitchen waste and put in the compost. Maxime took this photo for me, by standing on top of one of the compost bins.

Three wooden bins have been set up, with handy hinged lids and sides, and clever metal clasps which mean that compost can be chucked in or extracted by people of all sizes and physical abilities. Morgan, our compost coach from the Comcom, gave us the basics on what we were allowed to put in the first bin (orange peel yes, bones no). Then he instructed us on adding dry twiggy stuff from the second bin and stirring the two together for better decomposition. The third bin in the array is for maturing compost and will be dealt with by him and our compost ambassador, Maxime. 

 

Dry twiggy material for adding to the compost, with the clever spiral compost stirrer.

Morgan and Maxime can be contacted at any time that citizen composters notice a problem, such as low levels of twiggy stuff, or bin number one is full. They will also distribute mature compost when the time comes. So we all have one anothers phone numbers and emails. The compost bins are locked and only citizen composters have the code to access them.

 

Gérard, Deputy Mayor, is always at his best when pouring drinks for a community apéritif.

After all the formalities were dealt with Morgan brought out cider, apple juice and acrylic goblets branded with the Loches Development Agency. We all stood round sipping apple based beverages and chatting then happily went off with our new green kitchen waste buckets, courtesy of the Comcom.

 

Françoise had brought along a bag of kitchen waste so she was able to make the first use of the bin.

 

*Comcom - Communauté des communes, a level of local government that sits between the municipality (Fr. commune) and the county/shire (Fr. département/préfecture).