Each week our Chippendale roadside solutions compost over 300kg of food waste to grow soil to grow food in our road gardens.
• There are thousands of stories in our streets, and these are some of them
Composting cools our roads by growing vegetation, trees, grows our community and is fun. Anyone living or working here may use the different options for their food waste.
• One of the many different composting options in Chippendale’s road gardens
When we garden and compost in the street where we live we grow something in ourselves and we grow our community, as this story by a road gardener, Vicki Tenant in Surry Hills, Sydney, affirms.
• Vicki Tennant with her compost seat made by John Fry to her left
One compost is at the corner of Shepherd and Daniels streets. Pedestrians may sit down and enjoy a quiet moment even if we don't put food waste in it. While there we may say g'day to the espaliered fruit tree which is enjoying the compost below ground level.
• Compost driven fruit trees
In this garden bed the fruit trees enjoy the compost in the soil.
• Compost boosts our espaliered fruit tree. Yum.
For each kilogram of food waste composted we prevent over 2 kilogram of climate destroying pollution going into our planet’s air.
We mostly work out what to do and plan as we garden or simply stop and chat in our streets, and there’s also our facebook page for communication. We have a local council policy where anyone may garden in the road footpaths without Council approval after first running through a common sense checklist such as Dial before your dig, etc.
• The 120 litre rotating compost bin in the background is filled at least twice a week, and the contents are transferred to a 400 litres compost bin which has a high worm population and high breakdown rate. The worm farms in the foreground are continually at capacity.
Anyone can do this, too. For example, you can use an existing compost option near you or set up your own using the Sharewaste option. We used Sharewaste to bring our compost options to full capacity and when they’re overloaded we take the listing down from time to time. To respond to the growing demand we keep adding composting capacity.
There’s some beautiful decay around Chippendale’s road gardens and we’re embracing it.
Michael