SET UP YOUR OWN Food Scrap Friday

Lachlan Jobbins shares his tips for starting your own community initiative

MAKE IT EASY FOR DONORS

Choose a central drop-off point for scraps, such as the school gates).

This may not be near your garden, but it’s easier if it’s a spot that people will walk past every day.

A weekly event is easy to remember and becomes part of the routine.

Source buckets with lids (try your local tip shop or re-use centre) and give them away – no smells to worry about and scraps won’t turn up in plastic bags that can’t be re-used!

Organise a painting session and use a stencil to decorate buckets for project awareness. Donors can drop and swap buckets every week.

MAKE IT A COMMUNITY ACTIVITY

Start small (we started with just two people) and recruit helpers: your friends, their friends, other parents and garden members.

Make it social: have coffee or morning tea in the garden afterwards.

Seek donations: Fallen leaves, bags of sawdust, pet straw, coffee grounds.

Get the kids involved! They love to

weigh the scraps and do the sums. They also love feeding the worm farm.

MAKE IT PUBLIC

Measure and record your collections every week, and report them via social media. Constantly remind people (especially donors) and make them feel good about how much kitchen waste they are recycling.

Share your results with your local councillors, newspapers and other community gardens.

SHARE YOUR LEARNING

Run a compost or worm farming workshop (and inspire donors to become composters themselves).

Let kids ‘explore’ the compost bin. Share tips on how to reduce waste – before it needs to be composted.

For example, make brown bananas into banana cake and bring it to share.

Use the compost in your garden and show people the difference it makes.

Celebrate your success and give back. Give away compost and produce to the garden community and beyond.