It’s late on a Thursday night and your phone glows with the weekly bin reminder. Out goes the food and garden organics bin, filled with the weekend’s grass clippings, brekky banana peels and the scraps from dinner prep.
These organic materials once would have largely gone to waste, rotting away in landfill, but that is no longer the case. Separating them into the lime green bin starts them on a journey to a new life.
So, what happens to the contents of our food and garden organics bins?
From food scraps to farm soil
For the last 10 years, Veolia has been processing food and garden organics at their Bulla site in Melbourne’s north-west. They take the likes of discarded orange peels, chicken bones and rosebush clippings from homes across 11 metropolitan councils and transform it into products such as soil conditioner for farms. With over 60 truckloads a day coming in, they’ve processed more than a million tonnes over the past 10 years. That’s enough to fill the MCG almost 3 times.
Bulla’s Operations Manager Craig Johnstone wants to turn people’s perspective on food and garden organics around. This material isn’t waste, but a resource with clear benefits.
“Your food and garden waste is highly valuable for recycling,” he says. “The compost we produce from the process is nutrient-rich which is perfect for all soils and helps new crops to grow in a circular loop.”
The compost also adds carbon and organic matter that helps improve air flow and water retention in the soil, which means farmers don’t have to use as much fertiliser to help their crops thrive.
At Cleanaway’s new composting facility in Thurla, near Mildura in the state’s north-west, it is a similar story. The facility was purpose-built to process local organics and will take around 13,000 tonnes of materials a year from kerbside bins. This creates approximately 7,000 tonnes of compost annually: a huge benefit to farmers in the region. It takes significant amounts of compost to improve the area’s sandy soils. Instead of paying expensive freight costs, farmers can now buy compost made locally from the contents of lime green bins.
These are just two examples of facilities around Victoria turning household food scraps and garden clippings into useful products to help grow food again.
Creating quality compost
Simply by separating our food and garden organics from other recycling and rubbish, we can help create a useful product. But keeping rubbish out is key to creating good compost. While most people do the right thing, contamination still occurs. From items placed in plastic bags, to the ambitiously placed artificial Christmas tree, the result is the same. Plastic and other rubbish can make compost unusable – meaning valuable organic materials end up in landfill.
Facilities like those run by Veolia and Cleanaway are part of Victoria’s transition to a circular economy. Diverting organic materials from landfill is an important step that you can help with. By keeping rubbish out of your lime green bin, you can make your ‘waste’ a valuable resource. Your small acts can make a big impact on Victoria’s sustainable future.
