YOUR local
ISSUE 017 FRIDAY, 30 MARCH, 2018
6 PAGE RACING GUIDE
YOUR INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY
PAGE 11
WEEKLY REAL ESTATE INSERT
PAPER
Diverting FOGO from landfill
WHEN you’re licensed by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to handle 50,000 tonnes of organic material a year, big machinery is mandatory to turn the rows every day to eventually produce 20,000 tonnes of high quality compost. This is what Carbon Mate’s Charlie Bannantyne and Gillian Bannantyne have been doing since 2009 as a result of acquired Riverina Compost Mulching at Gregadoo. “The original motivation was to restore the fertility at our property, Deloraine, once a beautiful place but, since the 1930’s
Charlie Bannantyne and Gillian Bannantyne at Carbon Mate.
and 1940’s, had eroded and degraded very badly due to over-grazing resulting in the loss of vegetation,” Charlie explained. “There’s always been waste organic materials available for composting rather than going into landfill and the big picture was to process organic waste materials into compost and apply it to the paddocks at Deloraine to return soil fertility,” he said. Gillian pointed out, however, that the licencing requirements to process organic waste into compost is highly regulated and controlled by the EPA.
For two and a half years, Carbon Mate has been processing and composting Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) from Albury, Wodonga, Corowa and Indigo councils, receiving a total of 24,500 tonnes from the four areas each year. In addition, 70,000 litres of commercial food waste is received from the ACT every week, “It is such a waste that organic materials are dumped into landfill when they can be transformed into fertile materials for soils and growing healthy foods and plants,” Charlie said. In addition to FOGO, other ingredients
Carbon Mate receives include clean garden vegetation from local contractors, commercial food-waste streams (food service/food processing/manufacturing), forestry material woodchips, putrescible organic waste from Teys, Heinz and ROBE, agricultural residues, abattoir material (paunch material / covered pond bio-mass) and mortalities. “At the Gregadoo site there’s always 30,000 tonnes being processed at any one time, and we’re licensed to produce 50,000 tonnes of compost each year,” Charlie said. continued on page 2...
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