Composters - the men and women behind the vision

Most of the garbage we produce in our home has high levels of food, paper and other biodegradable waste, "organics" in the trade. In a landfill, these organics lead to methane, a strong greenhouse gas. Organics also lead to the stench and water pollution associated with landfill.

As a result, whenever you look at dealing with garbage, organics is a prominent target. Most obvious is to stop the waste in the first place. Reduce wastage of food and you are a long way in front. According to the Australia Institute, $5.2m of food is wasted in Australia each year, more than is spent annually on digital equipment.

You can do better at landfill, capturing the methane, but this is ultimately a losing bet. Most of the gas is gone before you can capture it. You can incinerate it, but to get energy out of the organics you have to consume energy drying it out.

Best is to convert the organics to compost, and take the organics back to the land where it can grow more crops. It seems obvious but is far from settled. There is the question of contamination of the finished compost - heavy metals, plastics and glass being high on the list of concerns. There is the question of technology - the piece of plant to convert the waste into compost, how effective it is, how expensive. And, finally, there is the question of economics. Compost is classically low value, but its low density makes costs high.

Enter the composters. These are the people who underpin the entire edifice of sustainable waste management. They take a product from a waste processing plant, generally of low value, and add value such that it can be sold on to end users. The value is added through blending to create a product targeted for particular soil deficiencies, distribution, agricultural trials and even packaging. Some of the cleverest work is in pelletising compost so that it can be direct drilled into broadacre crops with seeding machines.

Without the composters, the end product after composting garbage would still be garbage. It would be a product looking for somebody naive enough to accept it. With composters, the end product is high value and in demand. Crops demonstrate this.

Perth is blessed with three excellent composters: Nutrarich, Richgro and Custom Composts. Each is driven by strong personalities who believe in what they do, and do what they believe. They don't see themselves as participating in the waste industry. They are in agriculture or horticulture. They are the most valuable piece of the puzzle. 

Compost worked into horticultural soils, image from Biogro

I suspect these traits are shared by composters around the world. They are driven, passionate and highly articulate people linking two ends of the continuum, ends that always were connected until relatively recently. Here's to the composters - the men and women behind the vision.