Composting our way to sustainability – one quality tonne at a time
By: Virginia Brunton and Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group
FOGO is taking off across Australia. That is a good thing.
It will reduce waste to landfill, divert up to 3 MT of organics from landfill, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by millions of tonnes and create thousands of new jobs. Win win win.
But some readers will know that we have been harping on about compost standards for a while now and not a lot is changing.
The only real problem with FOGO as a model is that contamination rates from households are higher for FOGO than for separated GO. By about 2%. Doesn’t sound like much but if that contamination finds its way into compost and onto farmland or parks and gardens, we will hear the roars of protest from users followed by the silent crash of the market as buyers desert.
That is a prognosis we need to avoid.
The key is to reduce the contamination of FOGO by households in the first place followed by better contamination removal at the front and back end of the compost processor.
But that costs money. Someone needs to pay to maintain high standards of compost. Particularly when there are low cost/low standard providers in the market who can use contaminated compost for mine site rehabilitation or landfill cover material.
The answers are:
- Better contamination education of households;
- Pricing structures that incentivise councils to invest in lower contamination rates, collection contractors to selectively manage contaminated bins and processors to remove contamination;
- Investment in cleaning equipment at the front and back of compost facilities; and
- Establishing and enforcing a national minimum compost standard specification before the product goes to market.
In MRA’s view the best way to achieve all of those at the same time is to include contamination schedules and minimum quality standards into the Local Government contracts for processing of FOGO.
Those schedules have the effect of rewarding low contamination with cost reductions and penalising high contamination with cost increases. That provides the revenue for processors to clean up contaminated FOGO.
It provides councils with a direct financial incentive to invest in education to reduce contamination at source (i.e. at the household) before it enters the supply chain.
The minimum quality standard (also set in the Local Government contract) stops free-riders undercutting the quality market players and producing rubbish compost for low grade uses. We have written previously about the Local Government Best Practice Standard, a product specification that Virginia and MRA have developed for voluntary use by councils (but it needs to be mandatory).
There are other ways to skin this cat, but MRA believes you can do all the necessary bits within the Local Government contract (education, contamination penalties, collection performance criteria, minimum standards).
Local Government just need an incentive to do it. Which is where the State Government and grants need to come into play.
The Commonwealth Government commenced a review of the AS4454 – Compost Standard in 2021 and four reports have been completed (two on the public record and two still held behind closed doors). The first two are about policy options and the last two, apparently, have to do with costs and the role of Government. All should be released for public information. None have been actioned.
One key finding is that Europe and North American States have set physical contamination levels (plastic, glass and metal contamination) at levels 50% lower than those allowed in the Australian Standard AS4454 (0.25% vs 0.5%). This is a bit of a no-brainer first action.
So, where to from here:
- Get the State Governments to mandate FOGO contamination schedules and minimum quality standards into all new LG FOGO contracts (so we don’t end up with a patchwork of arrangements by progressive and laggard councils);
- Get the Commonwealth Government to finish the AS4454 review and adopt the European physical contamination levels along with an Assurance program to make sure the standard is used and not “gamed”; and in the meantime,
- Keep encouraging councils to do it voluntarily via grants and other mechanisms.
Mike Ritchie is the Managing Director at MRA Consulting Group.
Virginia Brunton is a Principal Environmental Consultant and leader of MRA’s Organics Team.
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