Rubbish

One of the things I have been really impressed with in my new building is the way that rubbish is dealt with.

There is, of course, the chute for sending bags of rubbish on their way.

There is also an extensive area in the level 1 car park for sorting rubbish.

There are bins for cardboard and paper. There are bins for general recycling.  There is a bin for general rubbish and a hard rubbish cage. There is a bin for e-waste and a couple of bins for fabric. There are also bins to collect the deposit scheme containers which volunteers takento the deposit scheme refund bins in The District; the money raised contributes to the edible garden and the urban forest on the stadium concourse. There are also "free to a good home" shelves where you can leave things you no longer want but which someone else may love. I left a large salad bowl there and it was gone the next time I went down. Brandy and Whiskey are drinking out of a dog bowl I found there (they can't read so don't know that it says "good dog" inside it 😉)

And now we have a compost dehydrator. Apparently they had one before but it kept breaking down. Now there is a new one. It's maintained by the City of Melbourne and produces compost/fertiliser for people and organisations to use. You collect food/plant scraps in a caddy in your flat then when it is full you take it down and feed it into the dehydrating machine. It's only just been turned on and they've been running information sessions this week. I went to one on Thursday and now I have a caddy and the liners and a fob so I can access the dehydrator.

I am ridiculously happy about this. I have been unhappy about sending food scraps to landfill since I got here and lost access to my garden compost bins (which are now at Hill House).

My little kitchen caddy

The composting dehydrator in the
level 1 car park

Some of the compost we produce will be coming to the shared vegetable garden, which will be good. I dropped in to inspect it after the information session. We had some very strong winds on Wednesday afternoon and evening. All was well, except that some of the plants are looking either wind burnt or too cold. If they recover, good. Otherwise it's not too late to replace them. And I had my first harvest. The broccoli was starting to go to seed so I cut the stalks which were flowering or about to flower.

First addition to my new kitchen caddy

Very delicious in my evening stir fry