[iwantanallotment]

I may be wrong, but have my suspicions...
Our councils all collect our green wheelie bins of "garden waste", yet I know for a fact that my council doesn't offer this 'waste' composted for sale to residents.
So where does it go???
My guess is that Focus (for one) are a customer.
Not all residents are religious about what *can* be put into the wheelie bins, and clearly some broken plant pots, broken greenhouse/coldframe panes have been plonked in the green wheelies, besides who-knows-whatever-else.
My guess is that Focus have bought this 'compost' from councils and bagged it up for re-sale without even checking it.
I can't see any other way that broken glass and parts of plant pots, plastic packaging etc could BE in that compost??
Have any of you who've complained to Focus previously queried where they obtain the "compost"?

[wafflycat]

I don't know if compost has got worse over the years or if I notice it more now as I use much more since growing vegetables.  Has the compost got worse maybe because of the recycling initiative that many councils run now, mine included.  We have a bin for garden waste, which we pay about £60 a year for, we haven't got a compost heap.

As a lot of that stuff is supposed to end up being turned into compost on an industrial scale, and done quickly through the process designed to get the stuff really, really hot, I wonder if it isn't as efficient as we're led to believe, so we end up with stuff that is not as good as it should be.

[Shieldsy]

I recently bought 3 x 100 litre J Arthur Bowers Multi Purpose Compost, on offer at Makro 3 for £10, and found it to be very good although only used one bag so far for initial seed sowing so maybe I'm being presumptious the other two will be as good 

[celjaci]

we are drifting slightly off subject onto composted green waste, but I find it very interesting so I'll carry on!
When carried out on a large commercial scale the composting process works much more efficiently than our efforts at the allotment.
Everything is shredded, giving a much larger surface area for the bugs to work on
plus there is a good mix of green and woody materials giving a better carbon/nitrogen ratio
The heap is easily turned with machinery and the net result is that very high temperatures are achieved and seeds and roots are killed. I've tested sveral samples in a propagator and found them to be completely sterile.
The problems lie in the screening process -its impossible to remove all tiny glass fragments but there should be nothing bigger than 15mm - there was never much rubbish in peat.
 There is also the possibility of contamination with chemicals particularly heavy metals like lead and cadmium. One local council stopped selling the stuff last year because of this contamination. Where did it all go?

If you are wanting to buy composted green waste to mix your own potting compost you should look for the PAS100 standard but it seems many manufacturers do not

There were also some interesting comments recently on the Peat Free Compost thread
don't know how to do a link

[paintedlady]

Strangely enough I am also not happy about the quality of the compost - the B&Q one is more like bark chippings, and last year I found bits of (viable!) bindweed root in the Wickes stuff    but was generally a better quality than the more expensive stuff.  Although more expensive, I've found Tescos small bags of compost have produced much better germination than anything else ... but I suspect it contains peat    Currently I've been half filling my seed trays with the "rubbish" stuff with a top layer of the other stuff to assist with the sowing.  There's nothing worse than spending time, money & effort on sowing loads of stuff to find it was all a waste.