Each week Kingborough Council collects 105 tonnes of waste from 11,500 general waste bins – on average, that’s around 9.1 kg per bin. Of this, approximately 50 per cent of that waste is compostable materials and up to 40 per cent is pure food scraps.
You can turn these food scraps into garden gold by keeping it out of your landfill bin and putting into your compost bin!
Great reasons to compost include…
Once disposed in landfill, food waste rots and becomes anaerobic, which transforms the organic material in the food into methane and carbon dioxide. Sadly, methane is 25 times more harmful to our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. It’s estimated that 7.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent will be generated from food waste disposed on in 2014-15 over the life of its decay.
On average, up to 40% of the average household bin is pure food waste.
In Australia, we:
- Lose up to $20 billion to the economy through food waste,
- Waste 25 per cent of all vegetables grown on farms – they are left on the farm where they’re wasted,
- Have agricultural losses to farmers of $2.84 billion,
- Our households throw away 3.1 million tonnes of edible food – that’s close to 17,000 grounded 747 jumbo jets, and
- Incur food waste costs for households between $2,200 – $3,800 each year.
Check out our Home Composting Booklet left (view or download) for advice on how you can compost all your food scraps at home using compost bins, chickens, worm farms and more.
Check out these videos on Hot Tips for Composting
