Tribulations & participation

As we have been learning for a while now, one of the biggest challenges of action research is the way that things often don’t go as planned. In fact, they can go quite badly.

At the moment, Maiden Lane’s food waste scheme has a problem and, if you are one of the residents living above the site where the Rocket has been installed, you will know all to well how bad that problem smells.

Despite assurances that the Rocket would be odourless, several residents living close to the composting machine are being affected by very bad composting smells. The Council is working hard to sort this out and is looking at installing a deodorising system.

Unfortunately, there is very little that we, the research team, can do about this although we are making sure that the Council keep residents fully informed of developments. For us, it is vital that the residents affected by the smell are told exactly what’s going on.

On a much brighter notes, we have received some initial data on participation rates. So far, over 50% of households on the estate have been given caddies and, of these, 170 households put out food waste to be collected during the collections’ first two weeks of  operation.

This means that almost 64% of households that have bins are taking part of the scheme. Not bad… but could do better! We’ll be considering how we can improve this participation rate during our next research workshop.

Look what’s just arrived…

After months of planning, the Rocket composter was finally delivered yesterday. It’s now busy warming up, ready for it’s first load of Maiden Lane food waste on Monday 21st September.

The rocket is coming: site preparation finally begins

Work has finally begun preparing the site where the Rocket Composter is going to be installed. The machine will be sited underground, in some old garage space on Maiden Lane itself.

Residents living near the site have been informed about the work through flyers and this great banner, which Clare designed.