The third way of organic waste management

Ashley Wearne makes a case for community composting.

Food waste collection services have dominated the discussion around waste management and landfill emissions recently. Centralised, government-steered, kerbside-collected waste management has for around a century been the number one strategy and expectation for almost all streams of household rubbish, but as we know from the renewable energy sector, a centralised service is not always best in every situation, and won’t always cover the whole population.

As with other infrastructure services, we have the option to manage organic waste on a second level, in the household, but also on a third, in the community. Centralised services have made things convenient over the last century: out of view, implemented via industrial operators through government contracts, with costs that are withdrawn from us in a vague bundle of periodic rates.

With a background in decentralised renewable energy, and with all the things happening in the organic waste sector, I recently met with and mapped out many of the community composters around Australia, to get an idea of the contribution that decentralised organic waste processing could make towards landfill reduction targets. I found many different approaches and technologies being utilised, and paid close attention to household-level composting as well.

Community composting is probably the least-developed but, in many ways, most interesting opportunity for organic waste recycling, particularly because of the volume of material that can be processed efficiently in community-scale systems. The size of these systems has huge benefits over household-size compost bins, which rarely produce the kind of heat needed to process organics in an acceptable timeframe.

My research has found that rural communities take to community and household composting quite well, while the number of systems in Sydney and Melbourne is quite small, a key challenge being the operational sustainability of community composting and the heavy burden on individuals trying to do the composting for their communities. Brisbane, however, is quite surprising.

Most city councils and state agencies have lost interest in small-scale composting and are putting their full weight behind the kerbside collection services known as FOGO (food organics garden organics), though several councils have acknowledged significant challenges in moving food waste from the landfill-destined ‘red bin’ to a ‘green bin’ recycling system.

Some municipalities have now had to suspend FOGO services in certain neighbourhoods due to severe contamination, meaning that households have not sufficiently separated their waste streams into their bins and the industrial processors are unable to handle the amount of plastics and rubbish in their composting facilities.

These changes were partly initiated when China placed severe restrictions on waste imports, while domestically in Australia, a national food waste strategy to halve the volume of food in landfill has been put in place and several waste system changes have been made already. At the household level, most of us have begun separating food organics from other waste. For businesses (who pay directly for waste collection), numerous support mechanisms are on offer to reduce, separate and process organics.

In terms of collection, waste pick-up services have been bolstered with measures such as weekly FOGO collection. The waste processors have received support to install enhanced separation technology and processing capacity. And at the government level, councils have received funding to implement education campaigns—one council in Sydney employs an outfit to look through FOGO bins at night and hang friendly printed reminders when they spot paper or other contaminants.

As a business, composting looks excellent on paper. Organic waste processors can usually collect ‘tipping fees’ to receive nitrogen- and carbon-rich waste, and sales revenue from selling compost to the farmers who are regularly exposed to price shocks in fertiliser supplies. But in Australia, things are complicated. Much of the organic waste received by processors is contaminated with plastics, PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and asbestos-laden construction waste, making separation costly. The resulting compost doesn’t really cater to the needs of farmers who are still dependent on easy-to-use but high-emission chemical fertilisers. It’s a frustrating situation given that two thirds of Australia’s 373 million hectares of agricultural land is degraded, depleted and contaminated.

Of course, kerbside organic waste collection can theoretically mitigate methane emissions from current landfill operations and produce the compost needed to improve soils. But FOGO programs also generate additional CO2 emissions by transporting organics from households to processing plants, and finally to farms, parks and old mining sites. These public-private partnerships aren’t cheap for the taxpayer, especially when the mulch and compost produced doesn’t always meet the standards needed for agriculture.

Why policymakers and planners have selected one mode of waste service coverage in such a disproportionate approach is unclear. When we look at the transport sector, there’s a diverse and dynamic interplay between government steering, market preferences, technical innovation and entrepreneurial push, resulting in public transport services, private vehicles, active transport corridors, ride-sharing and everything in between.

Similarly with internet services, you have fibre, cable, DSL, 4G, 5G, satellite and others. In the energy sector, generation technologies include solar, thermal, wind and hydro, as well as various storage technologies such as pumped hydro and a plethora of battery and electrochemical options. We even use numerous power distribution technologies in our system, including the central electricity grid, mini-grids, swarm generation and storage (peer-to-peer energy sharing of surplus energy in home solar systems, aimed at adding additional neighbouring homes, thus growing a bottom-up grid), and standalone household service.

When the National Food Waste Strategy came into implementation, we invested too heavily in the already existing centralised collection and processing modalities despite the massive opportunities to reduce production of organic waste, innovate with processing, and reduce transport emissions and costs. The initial messaging around reduction and home composting has visibly declined, partly due to saturation, it being difficult to convince a significant number of additional households to take up an often ineffective compost bin.

Processing food and garden waste effectively in a residential garden is much more complicated than gardening shows make out. Efficient and enjoyable composting depends on particular feedstock combinations, moisture levels, aeration, and a minimum volume of material. Those in the know can compost a tonne in a month in a square metre of space, but for the others who just throw their food scraps into a compost bin, the process is slow, smelly, laborious and ineffective.

Many experts here (and in the US) are asking why there is such limited promotion of community composting despite the national obsession with gardening, personal carbon footprints and outdoor socialising. This is why the community composting efforts in Brisbane are so interesting, where the City Council has supported an extensive network of composting hubs and rallied locals to bring their food waste to their closest non-profit community provider. It’s the kind of approach to infrastructure and community integration you would usually look for in Scandinavia or the Netherlands. Council provided the hubs with financial and technical support for installation, and drove a campaign of visibility and learning, matched by strong community support.

In a stunning twist of plot, the City of Brisbane has recently even announced the suspension of their kerbside collection trial, advising residents to refrain from discarding food in their green bins. It’s quite a contrast to the success stories communicated, perhaps prematurely, in other cities, and probably a shock for the QLD State government after promising $151 million to ‘GROW FOGO’.

Brisbane’s experience with FOGO collection was plagued by low uptake and costly implementation, with little buy-in from the trial suburbs where many backyards are large enough for residents to do their own composting. On the processing side, capacity with the existing industrial organic processors is limited and expansion is difficult, especially after the contamination issues happening during the adaptation period.

Each council is implementing FOGO at their own pace, often with differing methodologies and rules. Much money has already been spent by councils with poor results in terms of contamination, costs, commitment from households and businesses, and public confusion. Unfortunately, different industrial processors have different technologies and systems, meaning that residents in different areas have to follow different rules. There is no clear national message to help people understand what to do with FOGO.

With such varying success rates in kerbside collection, the connection between urban populations and their environment and food chains is key for ecological sustainability. Composters and gardeners around the country are looking for ways to attract a more informed public to bring food scraps to their systems.

Community composting is an excellent measure for public awareness and environmental sensitisation. But more than this, community composting should be one of the three prongs of the National Food Waste Strategy, and contribute a huge volume of the landfill diversion target, at a very low cost, with practically zero methane and CO₂ emissions.