Bute Community GRAB Woodchip

Today, volunteers from Bute Community Links and The GRAB Trust went searching for woodchip.

Woodchip? Why, why? I hear you cry!

It turns out, Bute Produce are in the process of creating a brilliant alliance with the Joint Campus of Rothesay Primary, Rothesay Academy, and Argyll College, where food waste is to be gathered from the canteen and used to fuel their Rocket. This will mean a great deal of food waste diverted from Landfill, where stinky methane is busy being spewed into the atmosphere. It will also mean rich, nutritious compost for Bute Produce - a win win situation all round.

Wait, wait! you say. Go back a bit. Did you say ... Bute Produce has a rocket? How did that get past Health and Safety?

Oh yes, my friends. Oh yes. Bute Produce has a Rocket.

Only it's not that kind of Rocket (booooooooo!). It's the composting kind. A superduper composter, courtesy of The GRAB Trust and Compost Doctors, which works bacteria into such a frenzy that waste is broken down far more quickly than in an ordinary composter. It laughs in the face of your plastic bins! It chortles scornfully at your wooden bays! It even cocks a snook at the Green Johanna!!

A Rocket! Only, not that kind.
Anyway - the point is, Bute Produce has one, and they need green waste to feed it. That's where the Joint Campus comes in. But they also need browns - which is where Bute Community Links and The GRAB Trust come in. Volunteers from both organisations set off to the Bute Estate Sawmill, sacks in hand, and piled them high with woodchip. They then entered into lengthy negotiations with staff at the Mill for sawdust ("Do you have any sawdust?" "Yes." "Can we have some?" "Yes." "Thanks very much.") and were even given an empty sack to put it in.

All of this went into the back of Bute Community Land Rover and on top of Bute Community Dog, and was taken to Bute Produce, ready to feed the rocket.

Sawdust. Just in case you didn't know what sawdust was.

Staff at Bute Produce are already quite excited at the quality of compost coming out of the Rocket, but when the Food Waste programme gets underway with the Joint Campus, they should really see some fantastic results.

Meanwhile, we at Bute Community Links are delighted to have helped one of our community organisations take a step towards achieving an exciting goal.

Hurrah!