Southern Recycling Centre are now offering for sale organic compost made from green waste received at the Recycling Centre.

The Centre, similar to all other Civic Amenity sites on the island, receives 650-700 tonnes of green waste each year- largely grass and hedge cuttings. These would normally be transported to the Energy from Waste plant for incineration- a process that would cost Southern ratepayers around ?40 000 per annum. Instead they shred the waste and, over a period of 16 weeks, process it into compost for sale to gardeners, allotment owners and landscape contractors.

Until 2015 this compost was only available in large quantities to farmers and land owners. Following a successful trial over 6 months in 2015 of bagging the product in 25ltr bags and selling it to the public the Board sold in excess of 2500 bags. Now they are gearing up to produce and sell even more in the current year. They have purchased a shredding machine to provide them quality control over the raw product and are investigating ways of automating the bagging process.

Chairman of the Board of the Southern Recycling Centre, Port St Mary Commissioner, Alan Grace said:

“Commercial landscapers have always told us that, in our compost, we had a wonderful product. We are now making that available to homeowners and leisure gardeners. On island production of organic, compost makes sense in many ways. Not only is it a low value, heavy product and therefore expensive to import but we have the ingredients to make our own here on the island.

Creating value from waste is at the core of our business here at the Southern Recycling Centre. There is clearly demand for what we are producing. This product makes environmental sense, it makes financial sense and it is keeping the rates in the South of the island low.”