St Ives community orchard calls for food waste in Cornwall

Several local businesses and residents already donate their food scraps to St Ives Community Orchard, which is home to a variety of fruit trees, vegetable plants, and woodland areas.  

The orchard, on Penbeagle Lane, has a mix of eight compost bins that anyone can use for their raw food waste. They encourage locals to collect their fruit and vegetable scraps and deposit them in communal compost bins. Tea leaves, coffee grounds, crushed eggshells, and shredded newspaper can also be recycled and turned into nutrient-rich compost.  

Around 20 volunteers meet twice a week, to look after the community orchard, nature reserve and vegetable gardens. They also oversee the compost bins and worm baths, collect food waste by electric bike from various businesses and combine this with bracken and grasses cut away from trees.  

Currently, Cornwall Council does not offer food-waste collection in St Ives, so the community orchard is an alternative way for residents to take food recycling into their own hands.  

Elise Langley, a director at the St Ives Community Orchard, said community composting brings many benefits. 

“It creates a nutrient rich compost for our soils, helping with growing conditions and increasing biodiversity and takes the pressure off landfill and food waste incineration in mid-Cornwall.  

“The goal is to create enough compost for our veggie and fruit growing initiatives and eventually be able to make enough to offer back to the community on a donation only basis,” she said. 

Volunteers tend to the community orchard every week (Image: Supplied)

Following a fundraiser in June, volunteers purchased an electric bike for the orchard, which is used to gather kitchen food waste from businesses around St Ives. Origin Coffee, Foundation Coffee, Yallah cafe, 27 The Terrace restaurant, St Eia café, The Mine Brewery and Leach Pottery, regularly contribute peelings, coffee grounds, spent brewery grains and other waste to the community compost bins.  

Sarah Walker, the Sustainability Officer at Origin Coffee, said the scheme is creating a “circular exchange” between the orchard and local businesses.  

“At Origin Coffee, we are very proud to work with local groups such as St Ives Orchard and Cornwall Gleaning Network to redistribute our coffee by-products like chaff and grounds. This circular exchange means that nutrients and materials aren’t wasted but instead help to produce new food for our local communities,” she said.   

Earlier this year, Cornwall Council announced that food waste recycling will commence in phases beginning in 2023. However, volunteers at St Ives Community Orchard said more could be done to recycle locally.  

Sue Smith, a St Ives volunteer who donates her kitchen scraps to the compost bins every week, said:  

“An awful lot of our waste is food waste. Logistically, this area is difficult with all the tourists and second homes, so I can see why [food waste bins] might take longer to get it sorted, especially as everything is so far away from each other in Cornwall.  

“But we need food waste for people that are local, which can be collected at least once a week. This is one solution, but there needs to be lots of different routes to make it as easy for people as possible.”