Brimscombe & Thrupp Community Composters
Winter Open Hours: SATURDAYS 10am-12pm

As a Brimscombe and Thrupp  resident you can be a co-operative share holder OR a composter OR both.

As a Co-operative Shareholder:

BATCOM, the co-operative is a Community Benefit  Society and you can own a bit of it. 80% of it must be owned by people who live or work in the Brimscombe and Thrupp parish, so there may be a wait if you live outside our boundary. And you have to buy a share. It costs £1.

As a Composting Subscriber:

The Community Composting Scheme is part of what BATCOM does, and subscriptions are available for households in Brimscombe and Thrupp only. A subscription costs £50, for which you can bring your green garden waste throughout the year.  Subs holders contribute towards the cost of running the composting site but regular volunteers compost for free. 

 


https://maps.app.goo.gl/KQ4MjFqfP7xJ4XDA8

Find us at – Hope Mill Lane, Thrupp GL5 2SH

What3Words: unearthly-remember-covers

 

How it works

As BATCOM is a Community Benefit Society, becoming a shareholder enables you to have a say in how it is run. As a person over 16 who lives or works in Brimscombe and Thrupp, you will be able to buy £1 shares in BATCOM. Up to 20% of our members can live outside the parish boundary.

Additionally, to join the composting scheme you must be a household in Brimscombe and Thrupp. You will pay an annual subscription fee of £50 (less than the Council’s brown bins collection service). Our running costs at the scheme are funded partly from these fees, partly from donations and partly from recycling credits, money paid to us per tonne of green waste we compost.

Regular volunteers at BATCOM don’t need to pay composting subs. You don’t need to be a composting expert either! If this appeals, please email us for details.

Finished, unsieved compost will be made available to members and non-members during our opening hours.

Finished, sieved compost will be occasionally bagged up and made available too.

If you can, please consider leaving a pay-as-you feel donation when you visit us. These small contributions help us to keep the site safe and tidy, repair machinery and pay towards equipment hire and overheads – all the day-to-day costs of running the scheme.

What can we compost? Composting Rules and Site Information...

Members of the composting scheme can compost domestic garden and allotment organic green waste. BATCOM cannot take food/kitchen waste or pet litter or bedding, waste from businesses or any kind of general recycling or landfill waste.

To help us to easily shred your garden waste and fill our composting bays, there are separate signposted areas where you can leave different types of green materials. If you can sort them before you come, it’s easy to pop them in the right place when you arrive.

Before you come, separate your green materials into these types:

  • Lawn Clippings, soft non-woody weeds/plants
  • Small woody herbaceous plants, hedge trimmings, branches no larger than 4″ diameter
  • Bags of fallen leaves

Please don’t bring:

  • Wood with nails, twine or plastic
  • Plastic – pots, bags, netting etc
  • Sods of turf, clods of soil, large rootstocks, plants still in pots or general-waste garden rubbish.

 

A few words about persistent herbicides/weedkillers:

Members must not bring grass clippings from lawns that have been treated with products containing Aminopyralid or Clopyralid herbicide in the previous year.  Such products selectively kill broadleaf weeds that are growing in grass.  Unfortunately these Aminopyralid and Clopyralid herbicides are persistent, and can kill plants that are later given compost made from grass that has been treated with them. If you use lawncare products please take care to ensure they don’t contain Aminopyralid or Clopyralid. 

If you’re not sure, don’t bring your grass clippings to BATCOM.

BATCOM volunteers will be easy to spot when you visit – we are often pushing a wheelbarrow and we have dirty fingernails and composter’s smiles. We’re always happy to help and welcome your thoughts (either in person on the site or by email), so please say hi and ask if you need to know anything or have any feedback.

Composty People

Some BATCOM volunteers pictured in the early days of preparing the site