For the month, 590 tonnes of food and garden waste has been composted and sent back to earth, the equivalent weight of 786 cows. Unfortunately, 15 tonnes of contaminated organic waste was sent to landfill, with common contaminating items ruining the load including plastic bags, nappies, garden pots and building materials.
Greater Shepparton City Council Acting Director Infrastructure Mike Freeman congratulated residents for sorting their waste and hoped to see less landfill items in the green lid bin going forward.
“Disposing of your organic waste in the green lid bin has many benefits, primarily protecting our environment. Our local farmers and growers use and send the composted organic waste back to earth which improves the health of our soils and makes our land more productive and drought resistant.”
“When dumping organic waste in landfill it has major consequences as the material decomposes with minimal oxygen. This produces odorous gases and methane which has a global warming potential 25 times greater than carbon dioxide. Dumping food and garden waste in landfill is also a waste of a useful resource which could be used to enrich our soils and help to grow healthy crops and pastures that produce food for everyone.”
“Residents have done a great job in separating their waste and maintaining a low contamination rate over the past couple of months, let’s keep plastic bags and rubbish out of the green bin and achieve an even lower contamintation rate next month to improve our environment,” said Mr Freeman.
