Coming up to Christmas, everyone’s bins start fill up quickly and the time between bin collections starts to feel a bit too long.
One of the ways to manage our waste is to make sure the rubbish is going into the right bins – and one of the best ways to do that is to put food scraps into the green bin.
All those prawn heads, ham scraps, left over crackers, unused dairy products, fruit and vegie scraps, coffee grounds, chicken and turkey bones should NOT be stinking up your red bin.
They all go in your green bin, along with any of the yard waste you’ve created by cleaning up the backyard for Christmas – and in a true Christmas miracle, your green bin gets collected every week!
What happens to your green waste?
In Kempsey Shire, all of our green waste is picked up and taken to Remondis in Port Macquarie, which is an Organics Resource Recovery Facility.
The contaminants are removed, the green waste is shredded and blended, then loaded into purpose-built tunnels to cook.
In as little as two weeks, these piles break down into nutrient rich matter, which is either shredded into smaller particles to be sold as compost, or larger particles to be used as mulch on parks, gardens, agriculture, sporting grounds.
Schools Waste Workshop Program
Getting schools to correctly identify and sort their waste is the idea behind the Waste Education Workshop Program currently being piloted at Crescent Head Public School, with the aim to roll it out across all the schools in the Shire.
The first part of the program was a hands-on “waste audit” to see how well they were sorting their waste into organics, rubbish and recycling.
The second part of the program was a collaboration between students from the Student Representative Council, staff, and community members to identify waste items currently being landfilled that could be avoided or recycled.
The students then workshopped an “Ideas Marketplace” to uncover ways in which the school can help reduce their waste.
Some of the ideas included:
- Education – Videos, Posters, Comic Strips to educate other students.
- Return and Earn – Look at collecting recyclables to earn money for the school.
- Scraps and Organics – Improve composting, worm farms and collection of food scraps and organics within the school.
The students formed action plans based on their ideas for reducing waste to landfill which will be further discussed and timelines put in place for implementation.
Once this has been done, the third part of the program will roll out, assisting the school to implement their plan.
This program has been supported by:
- Kempsey Shire Council
- Cleanaway
- Crescent Head Public School
- Jacqueline Murray from Grow Sustainably who is the facilitator for the program.
Why does all this matter?
Landfills (the large pits into which our rubbish is tipped) are rapidly filling up. Constructing new landfills is increasingly difficult, not just because they take up a lot of room, but because of the strict environmental conditions they have to meet.
This is why Governments at all levels are pleading with their people to not only reduce their waste, but to make sure the only rubbish to go into their red bins (and from there to landfill) is rubbish that cannot be recycled or made into compost.
Green waste (food scraps and garden trimmings) has the dual distinction of being both relatively simple to convert into a useful material, and particularly toxic when dumped into a landfill pit, because not only does it take up much needed space, when it breaks down, it produces methane.
Methane has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous global warming gas, attracting the sun’s radiation and trapping heat at least 80 times more effectively than Carbon Dioxide, which gets much more press.
So, this Christmas, take extra care to sort your rubbish, put all your organic waste into the green bin, and don’t forget to take advantage of our awesome recycling services!
