"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Franz Heymann" contains
these words:

my council composts garden waste and makes it available for
free
at the
local dump.


Mine sells it for £5 a bag :0(

If that is less than 100 litres you ought to tell them they are
ripping you off.

Maybe they aren't ripping anyone off; just being realistic.

£5 might reflect the actual cost of council collection, storage,

We have already all paid for this in our garbage collection levy.
We also have already paid for what would otherwise have been the
labour cost of transporting it to, and manipulating it at an
incinerator or a landfill site.

processing, labour and packaging costs of turning household waste
into
compost. Councils that "give it away to the public for free", also
face
production costs.

Of course. But don't you find it an odd coincidence that they sell
for prices in the same ballpark as normal peat-based potting composts?
I call that charging what the market will bear.
Donkeys years ago, in the sixties, the local council produced compost
from household waste at Leatherhead at a price which was (quoting
from memory) about a quarter of the price of commercial composts.
They only stopped after a few years because of fears of spreading
disease and glass slivers, since they composted all household waste,
and not only garden waste. (Damn good stuff it was,too.)

There's no such thing as a free lunch, even for
plants. When councils give anything away free or at a knockdown
price,
council tax payers are funding that "generosity". Read your
council's
annual accounts, you might get a nasty shock to see where some of
your
money was spent, or "given".

Our council (North Ayshire) uses their mainland public's composted
green waste in the gardens it manages in schools, parks, public
gardens
and care homes etc.

Franz