Compost Awareness Campaign

Compost Awareness Campaign

(2014 - 2015)

The Compost Awareness Campaign funded by the Youth In Action Programme of the European Union, was carried out in 2014 by the NGO’s known as "Get Up Stand Up" & "Why Not?". Its function was to bring composting to the light and educate people on how beneficial and easy it is to compost resources. Left over food, paper, cardboard and more can be easily composted in order to create rich fertiliser to be used in the growing of plants and trees. As European society has grown wealthier it has created more and more rubbish. Each year in the European Union alone we throw away 3 billion tonnes of waste. It is clear that treating and disposing of all this material - without harming the environment - becomes a major headache.

 

The European Union's approach to waste management is based on these three principles:

  1. Waste Prevention
  2. Recycling and Reuse
  3. Improving final disposal and monitoring.

This project addressed the second principle together with other realities in the Maltese context.

Most of the activities took place on an 11 hectare plot of land in Mgarr, Malta during the course of 6 months. It gave people, a hands on opportunity, to various organic agricultural practices, the aim of which, was to raise awareness on the potential of re utilizing our organic waste, turn it into compost, using three different methods of composting processes - in compost bins constructed on site, and use this compost to regenerate barren landscapes, on which we are now implementing a food forest. We also used this compost for an onsite tree nursery which was constructed during the events, and the tree in a bottle campaign where attendees were given native tree seeds, to take with them and plant in their recycled plastic bottles. The rest of this compost was used to start up an organic communal garden.