Other people's compost heaps

When I got this garden I inherited the previous people's compost heap.

The composter has a little door at the bottom so you can take the oldest compost out from underneath.

But after I took the first few forkfuls to add to the first vegetable bed I'd dug, I couldn't get any more out, as it was pretty solid around the sides (it was so solid, I thought I'd hit the plastic sides of the bin and only discovered I was wrong about that when I took the plastic bin off the top). Also, looking at the top and what came out the bottom, I'd thought they'd probably put nothing but grass in it (boy, was a I wrong about that). What was worse was that when I took the lid off the top of the composter a lot of particles came off that I thought might be mould spores.
Unknown garden moulds can be pretty dangerous to your health. One man died after breathing some in. So what with me thinking it was mainly grass (which doesn't compost well on its own) and my worries about the mould, I thought I'd better get rid of my existing compost by sending it off to the council's green waste recycling. And I also thought I'd better wear a mask.

So, I mask up, put on my gardening gloves and start forking the grass clippings into my green waste sacks.

It doesn't take me long to get through the grass layer and that's when things start getting interesting. Below the grass clippings are copious slugs and snails, garden waste in varying stages of decay and a whole host of things I really wasn't expecting, including strips of packing tape, plastic packaging, wodges of sodden, rotting paper, an Open University book, a 2009 desk diary and...

....the two of clubs.
I picked out all of the non-garden waste and put it in our wheelie bin. I could probably have fitted all the green waste in the two green waste sacks the council is prepared to collect once a fortnight, but then it would have taken a competition-level weight lifter to lift it, which I thought was probably both unfair to the bin men and likely to see my garden waste left on the pavement, so I split it between three bags and left some where it was (with the composter removed from the top), because I was pretty tired by that point.

It looks pretty good compost, but I'm in two minds whether to use it or not. I did find a load of rubbish above this level that was completely unsuitable for composting. Clearly the people who made it took a unique approach to composting, so it may have perennial weed roots in it, or worse, perhaps even toxic substances. On the other hand, what's left does look like good, well-rotted compost.
I think though as it's vegetables I'm growing, safety first. I'm planning to eat the stuff that would grow in this and goodness knows what's in it. It feels like a waste, but I will be sending it off to the council  who will sterilise it and turn it into soil conditioner (I assume that's another word for compost). I will just have to trust that it only contains inappropriate things and not things that are positively poisonous that won't be dealt with by sterilisation (which will kill off perennial weed roots and any other living nasties) and dilution with everyone else's green waste (which I think should reduce any problematic substances in it to harmless levels, as I'm hoping that the people who made this compost weren't being malicious, just slightly odd in their composting choices).