Composting
Across Australia, urban organic waste, that is not home composted by the resident, typically ends up in local landfill, leading to a significant loss of valuable organic material and a shortened life and high costs of land-fill sites.
To address this issue, a pilot program ‘City to Soil’ was developed to collect household organic waste, and process this into high quality compost in Queanbeyan, NSW. It’s success became the basis for a wider trial, Groundswell, in three locations in rural NSW including Condobolin.
The vision of Groundswell is to prove the wider economic viability of the ‘City to Soil’ collection system and establish composted urban organic waste as a cost effective, high quality agricultural product.
It is a partnership project involving Goulburn Mulwaree Council, Queanbean Palerang, Queanbeyan City Council, Lachlan Council, the WCC, the Palerang Agricultural Society, Bettergrow and the South East office of the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DCC) Sustainability Programs division, and is funded by the NSW Environment Trust.
The composting building was built using compressed earth bricks, water tanks and uses cross ventilation in it's design. This philosophy has wider benefits for a well and wholistic community.
Compost Marketability
· Market compost through a bag and tag method based on the initial output amounts and benefits and costs associated with this method. Includes bag options, bagging, tagging, printing etc
· Increase current output from the composting process
· Gain access to all green waste as an option to increase the feed stocks for the compost. This includes the lease or purchase of shredding equipment, or council providing a shredding option or the hire of a person/shredder
· Council to market the product and the WCC to be paid a contracted amount to run and maintain the current composting product to minimise capital expenditure
Provide a benefit cost framework to enable councils to explore the impacts of diverting organics from landfill from both a direct financial impact and the social impacts of landfill.
· Provide a benefit cost framework to enable councils to explore the impacts of diverting organics from landfill from both a direct financial impact and the social impacts of landfill. This output will provide the catalyst for councils to continue to engage in the composting process and continued access for the WCC to a collections and stock source for composting
· The current MOU between the WCC and LSC to be explored to ensure that ongoing access to the feed stocks is maintained. This option is required to ensure the WCC is able to build its economies of scale in a required period that enables them to be competitive in a free tender process in the future
· Use the LSC landfill site as the collection site for the composting process. Future option is to lease 6 acres as a site to conduct the composting process
