In recent years, our local council (Kerrier, in west Cornwall) has
been taking garden waste at local waste recycling sites. They take it
away to a central depot where it's shredded and composted. But it's
disposed of locally, rather than being made available to the public
(spread on a nearby farmer's fields, I believe, with whom they have
some sort of arrangement). When I rang them to ask if they had any
plans to bag and sell it, they replied that they would really love to,
but new regulations from DEFRA relating to foot-and-mouth mean that
they would have to get it all regularly tested, which makes it too
expensive to justify (tested for F&M presumably, although why garden
waste should carry it is beyond me! Perhaps DEFRA are worried about
animal contamination).

I'm amazed and disappointed. What do other councils do? Is this
testing thing just an excuse, or does it really have to be done? And
if so, what's the logic?


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net