Learn to Bokashi your food waste and help shape a new Living Soil Network connecting people, compost and communities across St Albans.

What if more of the food we throw away could become a resource for our local soils?

Join Soil Squad for a friendly, practical introduction to Bokashi composting, followed by an informal conversation about an exciting new idea for St Albans: the Living Soil Network.

First, let’s talk Bokashi

Bokashi is a simple fermentation method that allows you to deal with all of your food waste at home, including cooked food, dairy, meat and fish.

During this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how Bokashi works, what you need to get started and what happens to your food waste afterwards.

No previous composting experience is needed. In fact, you definitely don’t need to think of yourself as a “composter”.

Then we want to hear from you

This workshop is also part of the beginning of something bigger.

Soil Squad is exploring how we could create a Living Soil Network across St Albans District, connecting people, places, skills and existing composting activity so that more of our food waste can be returned to local soil.

Rather than Soil Squad running every composting hub, we want to find and connect what is already here.

Who is already composting brilliantly?

Where are the allotments, schools, community groups, faith groups and neighbourhood spaces that could play a part?

Who has knowledge they could share?

Where could small community composting hubs work?

And what would people need to make them successful?

This is not about starting with a blank sheet of paper. We have an idea. Now we want local people to help us test it, improve it and understand what could actually work in different communities.

Older residents will be particularly important to this work. There is an enormous amount of practical knowledge, experience and wisdom in our communities that we would love to uncover and celebrate. We want older people at the heart of shaping the Living Soil Network at every stage.

What to expect

The session will be relaxed, practical and sociable. You’ll:

learn how Bokashi composting works and how you can use it at home

explore the connection between food waste, compost and living soil

meet other local people interested in practical environmental action

help us map the composting knowledge and activity already happening across St Albans

share ideas about potential spaces, community hubs and local partnerships

have the opportunity to get involved in the Living Soil Network as it develops

You might come because you want to learn how to Bokashi. You might already be an experienced gardener or composter. You might represent a school, allotment, business, community or faith group. Or you might simply be curious about what could happen if we started treating our food waste as something valuable.

All are very welcome.

About Soil Squad's Living Soil Network

The Living Soil Network is a Soil Squad project supported by St Albans District Council.

During autumn and winter 2026/27, we are bringing people across the district into the conversation, mapping what already exists and exploring what a future network of different community composting hubs could look like.

We’ll be looking at possible locations, different sizes and types of hubs, training, volunteers, infrastructure and the support communities would need to make them work.

What we learn will help us create a practical blueprint for taking the Living Soil Network forward.

Because healthy soil doesn’t begin with a bag of compost from a garden centre.

It begins with what we already have: food, people, knowledge and a willingness to do something useful with all three.

Description supplied by the event organiser.