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What you should know about green waste (www.brisbane.qld.gov.au)

submitted 2 years ago by Treevan@aussie.zone to c/environment@aussie.zone

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Did you know that approximately 18% of the average Brisbane household bin is garden waste, meaning tonnes of garden waste is sent to landfill each year?

Green waste collected by Council is transported, mulched and composted at green waste recycling facilities for beneficial reuse by suppliers.

If you only produce a small amount of green waste, or are looking for an at-home solution rather than a green waste recycling service, mulching and home composting could be the answer for you.

Remember, that while fees apply to take your waste to a resource recovery centre, you can use your waste vouchers, or take advantage of free green waste recycling drop-off weekend events.

Whiles this makes the best us of a bi-product of the landfill process, it is preferable to look at ways to recycle green waste to make sure the nutrients from our garden waste go on to benefit our gardens and local environment.

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[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Honestly the current green waste programme in Brisbane is crap. We need to move to a proper FOGO system. Right now food waste is the only reason I put out my general waste bin every week. If I could get my food waste used for productive reuse instead of sitting in landfill contributing to global warming that would be awesome. Apart from food, I could have my general waste collected monthly and still not come close to filling it. A weekly FOGO and fortnightly general waste would be awesome.

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I lived on 650m2 on a heavily planted block and not a single gram of organic waste left it. The beauty of humid Summers is we can cycle all waste onto the ground easily and it's all relative, even a small yard wouldn't need to take stuff away (unless bamboo or large palms). People don't understand nutrient cycling, you can't keep shipping it away. It's all mulch and nutrient. Food waste is one of the easier ones to manage with worms or bokashi or even a managed compost.

But, if people don't get it then yeah, a better system than tubground biomass, picked up with a truck and spread somewhere else needs to happen. I was involved with the SCC in a questionnaire regarding conversion of all their green waste into biochar. Fairly cutting edge but haven't heard a peep since.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s all mulch and nutrient. Food waste is one of the easier ones to manage with worms or bokashi or even a managed compost

I believe that's what's done with FOGO. It's essentially Council sending around a truck to collect stuff to then be put into a big compost heap.

I think asking individual people to set up their own compost is a problem for a couple of reasons that I'll get to in a minute, but having local communities run a compost system at the level of a single apartment building or a row of townhouses is definitely a good idea.

The main problems with individuals doing it are:

It's putting the burden onto individuals to spend a not-insubstantial amount of effort researching how to do their composting and managing their composting system. We need to lower the burden to doing it as much as possible. Some people are going to be enthusiastic enough to do it, but for most people, it needs to be as simple as "take this type of rubbish and put it here".
It requires they actually have space for compost, and something to use the compost they have created on. For environmental reasons, among the many, many other reasons, we should be increasing living density away from everyone having large private back yards. Small apartments and row houses are far more environmentally friendly.

Local neighbourhood community composting systems could work great in this context if a small number of dedicated composters and gardeners are enthusiastic about managing it and using it, and just ask others to provide them with their scraps. I think this is the sort of local community activity that former Brisbane Councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan and self-described "anarchist" would have been a big fan of, because the way he often described his ideology was essentially around doing more stuff at the local level among communities, rather than having everything be centralised. And I think that's the best way to run something like this, but I also think that having a city-wide FOGO system is a good option for those who don't have more localised community composting systems in place.

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think not wanting to learn is excuse enough to not take matters into one's own hands. Moving green waste around in trucks is not the right answer either. Bokashi is a bucket, only the people living in a box wouldn't have that space. A small worm farm has a footprint of a briefcase. When people learn about their waste and composting it also changes how much they waste significantly.

Education and a subsidised local system for people who live in apartments and have no where to put their waste/finished compost is the only option worth pursuing. Even rules around construction/development should state that the ability to manage the building's green waste locally is included through whichever method they choose, even rooftop gardens could cycle a heap. Having a composting area built in to development for urban farming purposes would be a no-brainer rather than having a truck being "eco-friendly" spinning about.

Food waste composting is simple. Council run info sessions about it frequently. My kids were taught about it in daycare as well.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think not wanting to learn is excuse enough to not take matters into one's own hands.

Of course it is. Any solution that relies on individuals to go out of their way to take action is always an inferior solution. You can't expect that to happen, it's neoliberal nonsense.

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What? Neoliberal nonsense? Can you inform me what you mean by that?

Having an idea about how to manage one's food waste when it's an important part of an significant environmental issue (and is taught as such) is neoliberal? Wouldn't the neoliberal part be hiring a private contractor to build and maintain a waste system using public money be the neoliberal problem?

There has to be some responsibility on the individual to do the right thing especially when it is as easy as home composting.

Maybe the shameful part is that some individuals dont know how to do it and need to be educated on how to be a better citizen. Like how water wastage during El Niño droughts is an individual responsibility, not a neoliberal conspiracy.

Here is some reading for you. Do you live in an apartment or house?

https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/clean-and-green/green-home-and-community/sustainable-gardening/compost-and-food-waste-recycling/worm-farms

https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/clean-and-green/green-home-and-community/sustainable-gardening/compost-and-food-waste-recycling/bokashi-and-other-food-waste-recycling-methods

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The fundamental precept of neoliberalism is that "individual responsibility" is the cause of and solution to all problems. Suggesting that individual people go out and learn how to compost, buy the materials needed to do it, and run their composting system...followed by actually using the resulting compost...is a very neoliberal way of thinking about things. People won't do it, and you can't tell them they must. That just won't work.

The way to address the problem is to look at actual systems and incentives at play. It needs to be made into the easiest option for individuals. That could be a Council-run FOGO system, and I certainly think that's a significant important option, and is probably the easiest to actually implement consistently.

Even better, though likely to be patchier (which is why I think it can and should exist alongside a Council-run FOGO system) is local community compost systems. There are people like yourself who are happy to gain that knowledge and who have a way to use the resulting compost. With a community compost system those people solicit green waste to put into a community compost bin from their neighbours. Ideally, the resulting compost in this case goes into a local community garden. If it's as easy as collecting their green waste and putting it in the right location (whether that be a green bin or taking it down to the bin in the community garden on their apartment's common property), then you've got something that can work.

I'm not making a moral argument here, simply a practical one: if you want composting to happen, you need to put systems in place to make it take no more effort on the part of individuals than dropping off their green waste to be composted. Council FOGO would do that. Personal responsibility will not. That's why I say neoliberalism is such a blight. It's infested nearly every aspect of our culture and discourse, such that so many people—even moderately left-leaning people such as those most likely to vote Labor—tend to instinctively jump to individualistic solutions to problems.

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think you are applying that definition too broadly. Creating, reducing, and sorting individual waste is not neoliberal! It's called being a good person. You literally in your first post detailed some of your waste reduction strategies except the last important one. With the neoliberal theory, why not just dump it all and let someone else sort it out? It doesn't matter what you do individually, right?

I don't disagree with anything you've written except it's so simple to manage our own wastes that these systems you are proposing only need to exist for a tiny subset of individuals. Council used to sell the worm farms at a subsidised cost at events with all the info required to use it. Keep it simple, stupid. Anybody on any house and land package can manage their food and garden waste so easily as part of their normal home care practices. Using a mower is harder.

I guess the next question is, why haven't you tried home composting? What's holding you back? You seem intelligent, why do you need a special bin to do it for you? Are you in a flat/apartment so therefore it's impossible?

That’s why I say neoliberalism is such a blight. It’s infested nearly every aspect of our culture and discourse, such that so many people—even moderately left-leaning people such as those most likely to vote Labor—tend to instinctively jump to individualistic solutions to problems.

You need to chill. This is all in your head.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You're being far too restrictive in how you apply the term. I stand 100% by that part at the bottom that you quoted. Neoliberalism is a blight, and even when it's seemingly being applied to issues to which a person who would self-describe as neoliberal would never give any care, the neoliberal way of thinking has infested the discourse. Putting things down to personal responsibility to fix problems is a way to ensure that the problems never get solved. It's as simple as that. That's why the neoliberal way of thinking is so dangerous, and it's why I especially try to call it out when I see that mode of thinking affect even people who are aiming at end goals that I (as a leftist and environmentalist) agree with.

these systems you are proposing only need to exist for a tiny subset of individuals

I strenuously disagree. I imagine I could probably, in theory, get some sort of compost system set up for my apartment, based on what you've described. But I'm not going to. Gardening is not something I care about. Spending my limited free time figuring out where to buy the equipment, how to use it, maintaining it, is not something I care to do. I wouldn't know what to do with the compost that results from it, because I'm certainly not going to use it in my own (non-existent) garden. Even though I may have space in my apartment, I don't want to deal with the smell or mess that would come from it. I just have enough going on in my life (including other political causes that I make more of a personal involvement in) that I don't have the mental bandwidth to add this one.

And the thing is...I think that's most people. Most people probably could in theory compost themselves if they wanted to. But they won't, for a variety of personal and completely legitimate reasons. Enabling them to contribute to composting rather than landfill is a good thing, and the only way to do that is to make it trivially easy for them.

[–] Treevan@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago

Ahh, so you don't care for gardening or lawn care, are not part of the urban sprawl, and you are in that subset of population that wouldn't (but could if you could be bothered) manage your food waste on an individual level. Before the green waste bins, you just threw all your food waste into the normal bin then?

The rest of your point, including the unrelated politics, is lost on me. I can't relate to people who don't try and reduce their waste. I'm sorry. I'm trying but I can't see how putting stuff in a composting bin is neoliberal.

[–] kerr@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago

We used to take the free tabletop bin down to the local composting centre. That was neat. It would be nice to have that as a pickup service.

Looks like BCC have a trial on at the moment: https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/clean-and-green/rubbish-tips-and-bins/rubbish-bins/food-waste-recycling-service#about