Create healthy soil and lower your carbon footprint with this handy guide to composting.

A process at the heart of organic gardening, composting is an easy and rewarding way to connect with nature while improving the health of your soil. Most importantly, composting encourages us to live more sustainably by reusing food waste that would otherwise go to landfill.

In How to Make and Use Compost, composting expert Nicky Scott reveals how and why making compost is so important for healthy soil and the environment, and the best methods for making your own compost. Whether you’re composting in a garden or a kitchen, he provides clear guidance on the most appropriate system for your site and explains how different composting systems work, including cold composting, wormeries, bokashi and hot boxes.

This beginner-friendly guide features a handy A–Z to compostable materials, as well as guidance on common composting problems and their solutions. It also details how to compost food waste on a large scale, and how to plan a school or community compost scheme. An extensive list of resources, including websites, organisations, books and where to buy equipment, is also included.

Packed with beautiful photographs and illustrations, unearth the many rewards of composting with this handy step-by-step guide.

Nicky Scott is the author of several books on composting and recycling. He advises schools, local authorities and businesses on composting kitchen waste and helps set up community composting groups. The ‘hot box’ composter he developed is widely used for composting food waste.