FOGO

The annual WasteMINZ Conference (5-8 November 2018) is wrapping up in Christchurch at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand and Mike was amongst the first to present on its second day. Mike outlined the challenges and impacts of China's National Sword policy on local recycling markets and described the industry's current and potential responses.

MRA's Mike Ritchie was very pleased to have been invited to contribute to the Environmental Professionals Forum's (EPF) UnEaten Matters evening on the 8th of August. Mike moderated a panel of professionals to discuss the complexities of food waste.

ABC's latest War on Waste series has recently concluded and it has been a resounding success. This year the spotlight has been turned to plastic water bottles, straws, e-waste, fast furniture, the recycling crisis and food waste. On that last front, MRA's Mike Ritchie made an appearance to talk about why we need Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) services across the nation.

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.

The NSW EPA has opened round 6 of its Organics Collection grants under the $105.5M Organics Infrastructure Fund of the NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More initiative (WLRM).

The goal of Halve Waste is to reduce the waste to landfill by 50% by 2020. A major step in achieving this is the target to reduce waste landfilled at AWMC to 75,000 tonnes per year by 2018 financial year end. We’re at the half-way point and this looks like being achieved.

Albury City Council was recognised for its considerable achievements in implementing a FOGO service for residents in Albury and neighbouring councils at the NSW Australian Organics Recycling Association (AORA) Annual awards ceremony on Friday 10 November.

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 Mike Ritchie – Managing Director, MRA Consulting Group The fourth Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction has recently been announced. This matters immensely for the waste and local government sectors. So many quality projects are working hard behind the scenes to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Whether that’s a third bin diverting organics out of […]

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 […]