All grass cuttings, hedge trimmings and garden waste can be recycled.  The garden waste can be taken to your local household waste recycling centre and placed in the designated green waste container. Please do not place any other items into this container as it will ruin the composting process.

The garden waste is taken to a centralised composting facility where it is shredded, placed in 'windrows' and composted over a period of 12-16 weeks. In Nottinghamshire over 25,000 tonnes of green waste are processed through centralised facilities each year. The central composting sites use the turned window method, a process in which piles of shredded and mixed garden waste, approximately three metres high and four metres wide, and any length, are constructed. The windrows are turned regularly to ensure an even mixture, to provide aeration and to control temperature and moisture.

The quality of incoming material for composting needs to be carefully controlled, otherwise contamination can be found in the resultant compost.

What is composting?

Composting is a biological process in which micro-organisms convert degradable organic matter into carbon dioxide and water vapour, using oxygen in the air, and leave a bulk-reduced, stabilised residue known as compost.

Composting of household green waste:

• May reduce the environmental impact of having to incinerate or landfill the waste
• Provides compost that can improve soil structure, increase fertility and improve fertiliser efficiency
• May reduce the need for materials such as peat and fertilisers.

Composting is ideally applied to ‘green’ garden-type wastes. It is more problematic when used for kitchen waste because of difficulties with odour, insects and contamination, although some equipment suppliers claim to have overcome these problems. In the future, open air windrow composting of kitchen waste may not be allowed by central Government as there could be a potential risk of diseases, such as foot and mouth, being spread and this will require expensive ‘in-vessel’ or anaerobic digestion plants to be developed.  At the present time and with this in mind, only garden waste is composted in Nottinghamshire at the centralised sites.

See also home composting.