I came across ‘Compost John’ whilst researching the cancellation of the Big Green Gathering, an award winning, truly sustainable, hugely enjoyable festival, which was due to take place at the end of July.

John was only one of the people involved in the festival that were willing to talk about the situation, although not as close to management than some, it is worth it to tell you about what kind of guy he is.

He didn’t have much to say about the BGG cancellation itself, only repeating the proven statement that’s “its difficult to put on a festival”. They are ordinary people, he said, “not paid to do it, they’re not professionals…they did make mistakes, and were certainly in debt”, but were “only human”.

As a shareholder and lifetime Green Party member, his role at Big Green Gathering goes back some years. Starting in the first or second year, when the festival was at a site in Warminster, they were not composting. John told me that he said, "I will do your composting whether you like it or not", he said.

He built a pile in the woods which was filled with brushwood and sticks and suchlike, and returning the next year found it to have worked quite well, by the third year he was their official composter. Residing up North in York with his family, he composts at the northern BGG too.

The environmentally friendly life doesn’t end there, oh no. An Environmental Health graduate, John doesn’t use central heating and his two smoke free stoves ensure that his carbon footprint stays incredibly low, although he does admit to getting through “five tonnes of logs” a year. He got involved in green issues early, and was interested in nature, keeping toads and even some more eclectic hobbies such as boiling up roadkill and collecting the skulls. The desire to compost goes back years, as he got into putting things in jars and "watching the succession of decomposers".

As you would have guessed by now, John is an alternative waste solutions enthusiast of the type I personally have never come across before, not only is his carbon footprint “1/12 the national average”, he collects waste from local greengrocers at a penny a sack, and what he cant make into a delicious soup or stew he composts, in great volumes.

I was quite amazed by the sheer amount that this guy domestically composts. He takes 100 kilos a week from aforementioned greengrocers, and has more than 30 ways of composting in his back garden. These include rotating composters, a 125 litre Canadian composter, pallet bins, and a current trial of an aspherical composter. I couldn’t help but ask what his favourite method of composting was, and was quite surprised to be told, of all things, that he was quite fond of his compost toilet.

Not one to waste good sawdust from sawing logs to feed smoke free stoves, John proceeded to give me all the stinky detail. “It’s a sort of commode”, he said, “with sawdust at the bottom”. I can see where this is going; you do your business and put more sawdust on top, all good, very smelly. He continues, ”then you take the resulting shit sandwich…leave it at the bottom of the garden for two to three years to rot and then spread it on your cucumbers and tomatoes…completing the loop!”

Once the waste from the greengrocer is composted, he bags it up in “carrier bags I find in the street”, and takes it back to be sold for £1 or £2 a bag, and so “completes the cycle”, returning to the shop it came from. According to John, there is no other person doing this in all of Yorkshire.

John doesn’t even compost for a living, by day he is Professor Fiddlesticks, children’s entertainer.

I asked what he thought the future was for the green movement were the cancellation of BGG, a major fundraising opportunity for campaign groups, have an impact on communities and the causes they fight.

After thinking for a moment, he said that the BGG is an important part of the green movement, but is only a subset of it, and that the "green movement is unstoppable".

I agree with him, the effects of our impact are becoming increasingly obvious, and the requirements of scaling down mass air travel, the need for us to stop eating meat, and not consume as much, doesn’t sit so well with “ordinary people, the capitalist consumerist masses, the police, the tory boy, they are all becoming more aware that the green movement seems to have the answer”, he said.

The question is how the wider populace will come to accept this green future. The pressure from authorities, both in action and on the statute book, has curbed many of our freedoms to assemble without repercussions to our liberties. As John concedes, “the green answer isn’t the answer people really want”.

The practicing advocates of truly green living are immensely important to our survival on this planet, and whilst I do my bit, I could do so much more. I might not want to spend my days shovelling out the “shit sandwich” created by my own compost toilet and dedicate my life to alternative sewage treatment, but I am grateful that he does.