A New Approach to Waste Management
Truckloads of plates, forks and food waste from the National Folk Festival are being repurposed into fertiliser on a Braidwood farm, aiming to divert tonnes of organic waste from landfill. What initially appears like illegal dumping is actually a transformative process that turns five days of festival waste into rich, fertile compost within a year.
Martin Royds, a fifth-generation farmer from Jillamatong farm in Braidwood, about an hour outside of Canberra, sees this organic waste as a valuable resource. He describes the process as “plate to paddock to plate,” highlighting a classic circular economy model.
“People used to think of it as rubbish, but nearly everything is compostable. And the best thing about composting stuff is that it’s not putting methane up in the atmosphere and it’s putting the goods back in the soil.”
A Win-Win-Win Situation
Each year, the National Folk Festival generates tonnes of organic waste, including biodegradable plates, cutlery, coffee grounds, compostable cups made from cornstarch, and food scraps. For 58 of its 60 years, the festival had to pay a hefty fee to have this waste removed, but for the last two years, Mr Royds has taken it for free. The only cost is the truck to deliver it to his farm.
“It’s a win-win-win situation,” Mr Royds said. “Before, the Folk Festival had to pay to take it to a tip and then it got buried in the ground, where it produced methane. It’s gone from a negative-negative cost to a positive-positive, where I take it for free and we turn it into a fertiliser that’s been feeding my soil and feeding my cows, and it goes back to Canberra’s healthy, nutrient-dense food.”
Waste Transformed After a Year
To turn the plates into fertiliser, Mr Royds combines the carbon-rich festival organics with a high nitrogen frass made of insect poo. He then sprays the pile with biological inoculant, rich in beneficial microbes, to kickstart and supercharge the composting process. After some time he covers it with recycled pool covers to achieve anaerobic — oxygen deprived — conditions.
After a year, the pile is unrecognisable and is completely transformed into a rich, fertile compost apart from a few telltale items that stick around, including plastic fruit stickers.
“That’s the only thing we get left with — the silly little stickers they put on fruit to say this is an avocado or a lemon. Why they do that, I don’t know.”
Returning Organic Waste to Soil: A No-Brainer
Gerry Gillespie, who had a career in waste management, has long studied and campaigned for organic materials to be returned to the soil. He believes there is a significant opportunity being missed in Australia’s waste management system.
Depending on the stream, 60 to 70 per cent of the average waste stream is organic material, if you include paper and cardboard. NSW Department of Primary Industries has found that 75 per cent of Australian agricultural soil contains less than 1 per cent organic matter. Every tonne of synthetic fertiliser applied to those soils drives that figure lower.
With conflict in the Middle East affecting access to imported fertiliser, the crisis is now in the spotlight and, in Mr Gillespie’s view, returning organic and compostable waste back to the soil is “a no-brainer.” But he said the process needed to be done in conjunction with education to be successful.
“People need the right tools, the right motivation and the right information,” Mr Gillespie said. “If it’s going to be good for them and their kids, they’ll do what you want. You can’t just give people a bin, put it on their footpath and walk away and think, ‘Well, that’s the bloody end of that.’ Osmosis is a clever thing but it doesn’t work that well in the community.”
Fertiliser to Nourish Cow Pastures
The pile from this year’s Folk Festival does not have the familiar smell of waste. Once the inoculant is sprayed over the pile, the flies and odour disappear. In 12 months it will be fertile soil, taken up to high points on the property for rain and then gravity will carry it down to the paddocks below.
“We set it up high up on the farm and let gravity bring the fertility down,” Mr Royds said. In five years, cows will have been raised on the pastures from the composted cutlery, plates and waste.
Natural sequence farming, building organic matter, creating soil that holds rather than sheds rainfall has benefited not just the soil and the cattle but also the bottom line. Soils for Life, an independent research body, conducted a study of Mr Royds’s farm, Jillamatong, and found that his cost of production had dropped dramatically while his actual production increased.
“I think you’re mad if you don’t do this,” Mr Royds said.
A Change in Approach
Mr Royds has not always farmed this way. He started out as a contract sprayer but says his mindset has since completely changed. He said it now brought him a lot of joy to make something out of what many would throw out.
“Instead of going out every day thinking, ‘What have I got to kill? What’s going to attack me?’ I’m looking at what can we observe as a benefit — ‘What new grasses are turning up?'” Mr Royds said. “The hardest thing is to get the change of mind,” he said, quoting a line from farmer and author Charles Massy.
“The acre between our ears is the biggest change we’ve got to make.” Mr Royds said once he changed his approach to farming, he noticed more and more positive signs on the land.
“Everything I do is positive to the soil, to my pasture, to my animals, to my health,” he said. “And I’m looking at improving those positive feedback loops. I’m looking to see if there’s more birds, more insects and those sort of things, and if they’re improving, then I know I’m on the path.”
