The idea
The BATCOM site in Hope Mill, Thrupp, will feature six very large composting bays through which we will turn tonnes of shredded and mixed green garden waste until it has transformed into living compost to enrich the soil for next year's growing. BATCOM is a Community Benefit Society. It's owned by anyone in Brimscombe and Thrupp who buys a £1 share. The composting scheme will be largely built by volunteers and this project, The BATCOM Build, will help to pay for a lot of the materials and tools needed to get us underway. Once the big composting bays have been put in place by local building firm Yateman's, the community will be on site painting, making fences, landscaping and putting up signage before we can open. This project will support this second stage of the build. BATCOM will be a welcoming space for all who have a love for growing, gardening and nurturing the land - and a desire to help grow community resilience and resourcefulness in a time of change.
What we'll deliver
- Buy building materials
- Install a leachate collection and pump system
- Landscape our site to support the surrounding ecology
- Buy composting tools and equipment for volunteers
- Put up signage to help people to use the site
Why it's a great idea
BATCOM will provide a solution to a local problem - many of the narrow lanes are inaccessible to the council's green waste collection lorries - we have to resort to smelly bonfires or drive our green waste over to the recycling centre at Horsley. The scheme will bring people together - for a long time, the Parish Council-owned Hope Mill site has been an abandoned and underutilised industrial plot located right in the middle of the parish. BATCOM will turn it into a place where people can come to work together outdoors in a lively green space which is also a useful public amenity. We will compost our green waste locally - reducing particulate pollution from bonfires and carbon monoxide pollution from transportation. We will support biodiversity- with microbes and nutrients originating from our own gardens. We will cut garden centre trips to buy plastic bags of poor quality commercial compost when instead we pop down the hill to fill a sack of the good stuff to take home.
Steps to get it done
- Purchase primer & paint then paint container in dark green
- Purchase scaffold boards, treat them and build partitions for bays
- Install perimeter fencing
- Purchase materials and build lean-to shelter against container
- Purchase and installation of solar kit to power leachate pump
- Buy seeds, plants and bat/bird boxes
- A working day landscaping with Stroud Valleys Project
- Buy wheelbarrows and other site tools and equipment
- Design, order and install site signage
BATCOM's aim is to promote lower-impact living - through community composting and also by increasing awareness of environmental issues such as soil health, biodiversity, peat-loss, carbon-capture and recycling. We will help promote the development of other community composting schemes in the Stroud district. As a Community Benefit Society we use co-operative values and principles to guide us as we grow in the way our community want. With a democratic governance, all the big decisions can be voted on by everyone. In collaboration with Gloucester County Council and Garden Organic as part of the Master Composters project we will deliver composting workshops and events locally. We also hope to continue to work with Brimscombe and Thrupp Parish Council moving forward with their plans to enhance the Fromeside Land in Brimscombe and Thrupp.
