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Promotion of home composting bins is increasing in popularity among local governments in the UK. The number of containers distributed to residents has grown from 500,000 in 1995 to 1.2 million in 1999, according to recent survey.
OVER THE past decade, the United Kingdom has made a major push to reduce the volume of organics going to landfill. One important way that local governments have participated is introduction of home composting programs. In 1995, HDRA Consultants undertook a survey to establish how local authorities were responding to the targets set for home composting in the government white paper, Making Waste Work.
Since then, the importance of composting in achieving sustainable waste management has been reiterated in several documents. A 1998 consultation paper, Less Waste More Value, recognized the "valuable contribution" that home composting was making in reducing the amount of organics local authorities have to collect, and the assistance they were providing through subsidized composting bins. The draft waste strategy, A Way With Waste, sought a national target to recover value from twothirds of household waste by 2015. It stated that "at least half...