Volunteer in community composting

Our community composting sites across the city depend on support from local volunteers to maintain them. Find out more about how you can get involved below.

Why volunteer?

Food waste contributes to climate change in a big way. Volunteering with your local scheme is a practical way to help on a local level and reduce the city’s carbon emissions. Last year our volunteers helped their members to compost over 185 tonnes of food waste, preventing it from being incinerated.

Benefits of volunteering

Get active – turning the compost is the main job of the compost monitors, it usually takes about 15 minutes a week.

Meet your community – our volunteers induct new members to the scheme and share out the compost, connecting with local residents and gardeners. Some schemes are more active and hold their own social events like picnics and pub meets.

See the magic of nature – composting contributes to good soil health. It’s amazing to watch how with a bit of turning & help from the wonderful worms, a pile of food scraps and some torn up cardboard transforms into nutrient-rich dark crumbly compost.

Get free compost – the ‘black gold’ is shared out with the members of the scheme first, giving you buckets of peat free great compost.

Jump the waiting list – our composting project is very popular – we have 55 schemes across the city with 1300 households using them. Many schemes are full with waiting lists. Volunteer monitors get to jump the queue and start using the bins straight away!

What’s involved

Most volunteers spend an average of 15 minutes a week caring from the compost bins.

The main weekly tasks are – turning the compost to aerate it and picking out things that shouldn’t been in the bins. This is usually shared with another monitor, taking turns every fortnight.

Occasional tasks include inducting new members, sharing out the compost & reporting any repairs.

For a full list if the monitors responsibilities please see our information sheet.

You don’t need to have experience, we offer full training and you’ll be sharing the role with another volunteer. All equipment is provided.

We have vacancies at the following sites (click link for location):

For more info view our Compost Monitor’s main tasks page.

If you’d like to get involved and have read through our information sheet please email compost@bhfood.org.uk and include the scheme name you’d like to join.