Recycling

Watch this space: News on extended water harvesting scheme – coming soon!

Reducing, Reusing and Recycling at Martineau Gardens

IMG_1364Martineau Gardens is a community garden in Edgbaston, Birmingham, comprising 2.5 acres of organically maintained varied landscape. The Gardens are both a visitor attraction and a centre for therapeutic horticulture. Garden Volunteers on the therapeutic horticulture project look after the Gardens (under the supervision of the therapeutic horticulturalist) creating a place of tranquillity for Birmingham people to visit, to enjoy and learn about sustainable issues. (Pictured left, the Martineau Gardens team celebrate winning a Green Flag Award for being a best kept community run green space). One of our charitable objectives are to educate the public of Birmingham in environmental issues and the sustainable use of resources. The organisation demonstrates a number of practices that embrace recycling and advocate these to all our service-users and visitors. Here’s a selection of some of our current practices:

Reusing and Recycling in Jam Production

IMG_1383The Community Garden sells plants, seasonal produce and preserves from its modest shop. Jam production is a demonstration of how we reuse and recycle.  We encourage our members and visitors to bring their empty jam jars, used brown envelopes and carrier bags to the Gardens. The jars are reused as the containers for the homemade jams and chutneys that we sell. The envelopes are cut into circles, hand printed with our logo and become jam-pot covers secured with an elastic band. The bags are re-used in the shop for customers to take away their produce in.

Recycling in action around the Gardens

lettuces and recycled plastic boardsWe compost our kitchen waste, together with paper hand towels and  grass clippings.  This compost is used around the Gardens to nourish and mulch our vegetable and flower beds.  Pictured here, our vegetable beds are made with recycled plastic boards.

Plates and Pamphlets Demonstrate reusing and recycling

The Gardens are also a party hire venue. Visitors can hire the gardens for a celebration. Within our contracts with customers, we request people to use our reusable crockery over disposable plates.

Within the office, we reuse paper for draft documents, we use reusable ink cartridges and we always print on recycled paper, including our promotional material even if it means paying a bit extra.

Reducing Water Usage

We reduce our water usage by water harvesting. Water butts fitted to drain-pipes collect run-off and the water is stored until it is required. Find out more about our water harvesting system here:

https://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/visitor-information/the-gardens/water-harvesting/

Recycled Material in our Plant Sales Area

The ground covering of the Plant Sales area is surfaced with brick dust, a waste product from the building industry (pictured right).

In October 2013, Martineau Gardens was awarded winner in the Best Community & Neigbourhood Project at the Birmingham City Council Recycling Awards.