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@generation.soil

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Bristol food waste → living compost 🪱
clean, sealable buckets, no flies 🌱
120 household + business members in BS1-BS9
join the soil revolution ↓

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SIMPLE SUMMER SALADS 🥗

Today was spent exploring the picturesque 15-acre farm and then got to cook outdoors with the very freshest ingredients 🪴

Pretty much everything on the plate was handpicked today at @thecommunityfarm while on a day trip with @squarefoodfoundation 🌾

It was fascinating to learn about where our food comes from, the value of local produce, and organic farming techniques and we even managed to plant 130 baby leeks which will be ready to harvest in Autumn 👨🏻‍🌾

Lunch consisted of:

🌶 Flame roasted peppers, courgettes, tomatoes, onions, and garlic with Ras el hanout

🥔 Potato salad with parsley and chives

🍅 Green beans à la Provençale

🥬 Sautéed rainbow chard and broad beans

🥒 Fresh cucumber and salad leaves

🐑 Fresh ewe’s cheese on sourdough

You can really taste all the love and care that goes into growing all of the produce at the farm 😍 taken in The Community Farm by @generation.soil

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4 years ago

Hey Bristol!

After we nourish ourselves with good food its often easier to throw any scraps into the bin without much thought

Its time we think about what we do with our food waste and Generation Soil are here to help

We have just opened our first community composting hub in Hotwells, Bristol to transform food waste into healthy living compost.

Did you know healthy living soil is amazing at holding onto water?

Each one percent increase on organic matter in soil can store up to 25,000 gallons of water per acre…

By adding organic matter in the form of compost to our soils we can:

1️⃣ combat flooding
2️⃣ reduce the amount of watering
3️⃣ improve the health of your plants

And much more!

We provide our members with buckets and bokashi bran

Bokashi bran is inoculated with beneficial microorganisms which ferments your food waste in your bucket at home 🤠

This kick starts the decomposition process and stops your food waste from smelling 🙌🏼

We collect your fermenting food waste and give you a clean bucket and top up of Bokashi bran

We then return our locally produced healthy living compost to your door packed with all the nutrients and microbiology needed for your garden 🌱

Any extra compost is then redistributed across Bristol to improve urban soil health and biodiversity For a cleaner greener city 🥳

If you’re interested in joining our project comment the 🤠 emoji or check out our website using the link in bio

#communitycomposting #foodwasterevolution #foodwastewarriors #bristoluk #sustainablebristol #soilhealthmatters #generationsoil taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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2 years ago

Something pretty raunchy is going down in Bristol 🥵

That’s right, 30 wheelbarrows of wood chip later and our first community composting hub is getting steamy in the heart of Bristol 😶‍🌫️

Have you ever wondered what the best snacks for a microbe orgy are? 🦠

That’s right, its wood shavings and food waste 🪵

By providing the perfect condition for our microbes, they reproduce, doubling their population every 15 minutes. Wow.

That means in just 13 hours, a population of 8 billion could be created 🤯

Food waste and wood chip went in last Wednesday and just six days later it’s pretty much unrecognisable 👀

This’ll now be matured for a few months before we deliver it back to our members and redistribute the rest across Bristol 🙌🏼

#communitycomposting #foodcompost #compostrevolution #compostlife taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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2 years ago

Meet Alex, the founder of Generation Soil, a Bristol project turning the city's food scraps into living soil! What started as noticing how much food was being thrown away has grown into a community composting scheme collecting from homes and businesses across Bristol.

From Alex:
For me, it's all about closing the loop. I love that a bucket of food scraps from someone's kitchen can come back a few months later as living compost that grows more food. Soil is the most overlooked, alive, extraordinary thing under our feet, and I can't stop talking about it.

Plans for BS3 Jammin':

I'll be bringing soil to life! Come and listen to soil through headphones (yes, really), meet the worms, and see how your food scraps become living compost. I'd love to show people that the stuff we throw away is the start of the whole cycle, not the end of it.

Why I Love BS3 Jammin':

I love that it takes something we usually waste without noticing, gluts of fruit and veg, and turns it into a reason for the whole community to come together. It's the same idea we're built on: nothing's waste if you know what to do with it. taken in St Paul's Church Southville by @generation.soil

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2 months ago

Find a guy who looks at you the way I look at trees 🌳

Such a fantastic day at @belmont.estate last week, getting a tour of their land regeneration project just 20 minutes west of Bristol.

We explored their forest, home to trees hundreds of years old, led by their Head of Nature Connection, Martin Williams, and bumped into some Iron Age pigs and cattle chilling in the shade.

I felt such an appreciation for those trees sheltering us from the heatwave. My rented studio flat, built around 1910, succeeds at both being freezing and damp in winter and boiling in summer. But under the canopy, moving around outside was so refreshing. I could get used to this.

So maybe we should plant more trees? 🌱

Big thanks to @teddytoynton and @eddie___frank from @consciousplanet for organising the day.

Lovely to finally meet Amy from @inthecottagegarden in person after being connected since the 50 Ways To Cook days 🌻, and to meet the wonderful @_josephineelaine too.

📸: @inthecottagegarden

#treesofinstagram #bristol #natureconnection #forestbathing #belmontestate taken in Belmont Estate by @generation.soil

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2 months ago

Part 2. There was a raised bed in the corner, buried under bindweed, and I had loads of beautiful compost ready to go.

But I kept getting stuck on one thing:

I was renting.

Why put months of work into a space that wasn’t mine?

So many people feel this.

Why bother improving somewhere you might leave?

But the soil doesn’t care who owns it.

And neither do the worms.

So bother I did 🪱

Have you ever held back on something because the space wasn’t ‘yours’?

#compostbristol #bristolallotments #livingsoil #rentersofbristol #urbangarden taken in Bishopston, Bristol by @generation.soil

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2 months ago

Most people put these headphones on expecting silence…

Then we turn it on.

This is a contact microphone with a hypodermic needle that goes into the soil and picks up the vibrations happening down there, worms, insects, woodlice, water moving through the ground.

We amplify it, and suddenly you’re listening to a whole world under your feet.

People describe it as rain, a campfire, the ocean, being underwater.

One physiotherapist said it sounded like crunching meniscus (we’ll let you sit with that one).

We’re so disconnected from soil, especially in cities, all that tarmac and pavement between us and the ground.

This is a way to feel it.

Not equations on a chalkboard, but something alive and sensory.

Because it is alive. Extraordinarily so.

Made with the brilliant @asinglethread 🪱
Put your headphones on for this one. What do you think it sounds like?

#soilhealth #compostbristol #livingsoil #soilsounds #regenerative taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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2 months ago

Part 1. When I moved to Bristol in early 2024, there was a corner by my building that had been a dumping ground for years.

Mattresses, a skip, the lot.

My neighbour told me not to expect it to ever change.

I’d just arrived from the Wiltshire countryside with a new compost obsession and a tumbler in the boot.

You can take the boy out of the Shire 🪱

So I put my compost bin next to the junkyard and started plotting.

Follow along, this corner doesn’t stay a dump.

Ever looked at a neglected space and thought “someone should sort that”?  #compostbristol #bristolallotments #livingsoil #bedminsterbristol #urbangarden taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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2 months ago

People keep asking how I stay in shape without a gym.

(Jks. They don’t).

I haul 40kg of water across an allotment to keep the compost alive, overhead-press full buckets, and deadlift whatever needs moving.

It’s free, it’s functional, and at the end there’s actual soil.

My gains are microbial now.

Trillions of them. Thriving 🪱

(Doing it all in my @vivobarefoot, obviously. Vivo, I accept payment in shoes and compost.)

What’s your favourite form of exercise?
 #compostbristol #vivobarefoot #livingsoil #bristolallotments #barefoot taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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3 months ago

A year ago we had 47 members.

Today we have 105.

91 households and 14 businesses, all keeping Bristol’s food scraps in Bristol and getting living compost back.

The clearest sign of how far we’ve come was Feast On last weekend.

Same stall, one year apart.

Last year: ‘oh, that’s interesting.’

This year: ‘wow, what a brilliant idea.’

People are on board in a way they weren’t twelve months ago.

We’re volunteer-led and growing steadily, on a mission to improve soil health across Bristol (and maybe one day beyond).

Thank you for being part of it 🪱

If you’re in Bristol and want to be number 106, comment BUCKET and I’ll send you the details

#compostbristol #bedminsterbristol #bristolallotments #livingsoil #bristolcommunity taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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3 months ago

We could fight wildfires with food scraps.

Sounds mad.

It isn’t.

Healthy soil is a sponge, and most of the world’s has dried out.

Every 1% increase in soil organic matter can help an acre hold up to 20,000 gallons more water (Source: USDA-NRCS).

Drier soil means drier land, and drier land burns.

Rebuild that soil and it holds water again, resists drought, recovers faster.

The green in this video is a raised bed in the carpark behind my flat.

When I moved in, in early 2024, it was tired, lifeless ground.

I’ve been feeding the soil ever since, with compost, with scraps, with time.

Now look at it.

That’s the whole idea, scaled down to one patch of city.

We won’t compost our way out of the climate crisis, nobody’s claiming that.

But building living soil is a real, doable part of a more resilient world, and it starts with the most ordinary thing imaginable.

The peelings in your kitchen.

You don’t need land.

You don’t need a garden.

You just need to start feeding the soil you can reach.

Start where you stand 🪱

What’s one small patch of ground you could bring back to life?
 #soilhealth #compost #climateresilience #regenerative #compostbristol taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @generation.soil

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3 months ago

This is the soil factory.

It processes food scraps for 100 households and businesses, and it’s only the size of a large kitchen.

Ten metres square on an allotment in Bedminster, held together with pallets and hope.

The flow is all wrong.

Everything’s spread out, so I shift heavy scraps from one end to the other by hand every week.

Whoever designed this workflow should be sacked (it was me, oops)

I built the bays from heat-treated pallets thinking they’d weather better than they have.

Eighteen months in, they’re holding up, but they’re tired.

And there aren’t enough of them to store all the finished compost

So we’re redesigning the whole thing.

Same space, just some careful planning this time.

I’ll show you the plan soon.

It involves fire, which I’m probably too excited about 🪱

What would you do with a ten metre square?
 #compostbristol #bedminsterbristol #bristolallotments #livingsoil #bristolcommunity taken in Bedminster, Bristol by @generation.soil

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3 months ago