As a foulness shall ye know Them

Jan 3rd, 2019

As a foulness shall ye know Them

A quote from HP Lovecraft as I have had a very unpleasant experience today. We inherited three large composting bins for food waste at the bottom of the garden when we moved in five years ago. These were made out of wood and have slowly been rotting away. I decided to replace them with plastic bins, but this meant removing the existing contents and demolishing what was left of the wood shells. Unfortunately starting to do this I made a discovery.

Over a year ago I started using a “biodegradable” liner in the kitchen bin I was using for the waste – purely in order to reduce the number of times I needed to wash the bin out. When I came to remove what I was expecting to be largely clean compost from the garden bins, I discovered that these liners had not degraded and were in fact all the way through the bins and had actually prevented the waste in them from composting. I’ve spent all day up to my elbows in what was essentially pure shite digging them out and decanting the remnants into another bin. Then the actual wood infrastructure which was decayed in places proved remarkably resistant in others – I had to use a combination of a saw, a chisel and a mallet to extract the boards.

Finally, I had to carry all the boards up to the other end of the garden to dump them where they can rot down out of sight. All this combined with trying to explain her new Android phone to my Mum has not given me the best day ever. Still, done now.

Add a comment

Your email address will not be shared or published. Required fields are marked *