Organics

At a recent meeting with Local Government Mayors and CEO’s, a claim was made that transporting organics by truck to a distant compost facility (in this case 150km away) would emit more greenhouse gases than landfilling it locally. Thinking that the carbon forcing factor of methane from landfill (25 times CO2) would render that claim incorrect, I thought I should go back and check the maths.

Australia has a significant and growing challenge in how it manages its waste. Tonnages continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%, six times faster than population growth, and 2.5 times faster than GDP growth. Landfill costs are increasing due to landfill levies and landfill scarcity.

By Virginia Brunton, MRA Consulting Group MRA Consulting Group (MRA) together with a working group of food safety professionals and Freshcare, revised the Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) assurance code of practice (COP) and established criteria that allowed compost, produced under the Australian standard for composts (AS4454) to be used by farmers with Freshcare certification. […]

By James Moverley, MRA Consulting Group Three bin waste systems are becoming the norm in many regions of Australia. Melbourne and Adelaide have moved quickly to standardise 3 bin systems for Food Organics and Green Organics (FOGO) services. The NSW government has funded 3 bin systems across NSW, with the biggest uptake of the NSW […]

By Virginia Brunton – Principal Consultant (Organics), MRA Consulting Group Freshcare is the fresh produce industry’s own on-farm assurance program adopted by thousands of fresh produce businesses as their key food safety program. In addition to the Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) assurance code of practice (COP) to ensure safe fruit and vegetables, Freshcare also […]

By Virginia Brunton – Principal Consultant (Organics) and Mike Ritchie – Director, MRA Consulting Group The Great Barrier Reef is exposed to increasing pressures from climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, land-based runoff and other pressures. The summer of 2016 has been bad for the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef), one of Australia’s most […]

The new Source Separated Organics (SSO) methodology has seen tremendous uptake in the countdown to the next Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction. The SSO methodology provides funding to projects that divert organic waste from landfill. Twenty-seven new, expanded and/or aggregated projects under the methodology diverting source separated organics were registered by MRA Consulting Group (MRA), […]

The Source Separated Organic Waste Method has been approved and is available for use. There is still time to register a project for the next auction under this method and claim credits for your abatement effort. The next ERF auction is to be held on the 27 and 28 April 2016. To be eligible to […]

The councils of the Albury Wodonga region have set the “best practice” benchmark for food and garden waste (FOGO) recycling in Australia. Recent data comparing the Albury Wodonga food and green waste contamination rate to other councils that have introduced similar services, shows that the region is performing better than all others, with a current […]

From a media release by Noosa Council, originally published here. A waste industry heavyweight, Mike Ritchie, was one of two speakers Noosa’s community Jury heard from at its fourth meeting, held this week. Mr Ritchie, who has more than 25 years of experience in waste management, accepted the Jury’s invitation to present via video link from […]

Article written by Jacqueline Ong and originally published by Inside Waste Is there a compelling case for councils to go down the FOGO path? For NSW at least, the government is supportive of increasing organic diversion rates and has put its money where its mouth is with the Waste Less Recycle More initiative. MRA Consulting […]