Getting organics out of waste and into soil

A little over a week ago, I wrote a few words on LinkedIn to voice my frustration about organics. Nothing too controversial, just wondering why we can’t do better.

I don’t get it.

Australia sends 22 million tonnes of waste to landfill each year.

About a third is municipal waste — let’s call that 7 million tonnes.

About half of municipal waste is organic (food and garden) — let’s call that 3.5 million tonnes of organic waste going to landfill every year. Let alone all the organic waste from our food distribution system.

Organic waste can be cheaply collected and composted through a third bin for food and organic waste (a FOGO service).

Where done right (which is not hard), a FOGO service has low contamination and produces compost for agricultural markets.

Australia has organics depleted soils, and our farms can use all of the compost we produce.

And yet, whenever I talk FOGO, I get blank looks and talk of multi-million waste sorting infrastructure. It doesn’t need to be that difficult.

What am I missing? And who’s up for changing the conversation?

#rantover

It attracted quite a bit of support, and led me to think that I am not the only one troubled by this. That was nice, and let me recognise some common interests.

It also attracted some thoughtful responses about what I’m missing. That was important, because it might let this disconnect be resolved.

What I’m missing

Point 1: Farmers are concerned by risks of contamination.

Agricultural produce is exported, and any contamination of produce risks “non-tariff” trade barriers.

A non-tariff barrier is where countries refuse to import product, or discount the prices they will pay, because of real or perceived risks. Contamination is one of those risks.

That matters for agricultural exporters such as Australia and New Zealand.

You can’t guarantee that compost from a FOGO bin won’t be free of contamination, and so the argument goes that the risk is too high.

What to do about this?

First, and perhaps obviously, set up systems to get contamination out. Educate users but also have sorting systems to pull out contaminants before composting.

Secondly, educate markets. Markets understand and accept risks from pesticide and herbicide use. Let compost be another risk they understand.

Thirdly, drive this via the market rather than government. Sure, government will be involved, but get farmers and buyers resolving this challenge because they need the extra yields that come from compost.

An example is the Freshcare Food Safety and Quality assurance code of practice, which now incorporates the use of compost produced in accordance with Australian Standard AS4454.

Point 2: Councils need to lead the way.

Perhaps predictably, we hope and expect Councils to show initiative. They represent our interests, determine our services, and so it’s not our fault if they don’t deliver what we want.

To which I agree up to a point, but it feels too simple.

And whilst sometimes life is simple, I don’t see why Councils should have the sole blame (or credit) for our services. Councils ultimately deliver what people demand. If we want different services, then we need to ask for them.

The interesting thing is that Councils DO respond to the “squeaky wheel”. If 10 people go to a Council meeting on a particular matter, then that is seen as a big deal. 50 even bigger. So a small number of people can sway large decisions.

Point 3: FOGO isn’t that inexpensive / simple.

There are other ways of dealing with organics. In particular, you don’t need to have people sort waste in the home.

Instead, infrastructure can take this problem away from people, even do it better than them. It makes already complicated lives a little bit simpler.

Rather than have a percentage of people sorting a percentage of their waste properly, a waste processing plant can take all of the organics in the residual waste bin and convert it into compost. And it can do it pretty well.

This is of course true. Alternative waste treatment (AWT) can take mixed waste, extract recyclables and generate compost from the remainder.

It makes no sense to argue against AWT.

What I do struggle with, however, is the paralysis that comes from believing that AWT is the only way to proceed. AWT is expensive. It often requires long term contracts, and so is a big decision. Councils need a lot of time to proceed with big decisions.

I believe that FOGO is a simple way to break this paralysis. Move ahead with a FOGO service where it is simple to provide. There is still ample scope for AWT to service cases where FOGO is not simple (such as apartment blocks).

In an ideal world, we would have FOGO as well as AWT. Organics are too valuable to be dumped into landfill where they produce methane that is (perhaps) inefficiently collected.

Point 4: Just use organics for energy.

This point I found most challenging. I wanted to dismiss it because it felt misinformed, self-serving (typically coming from waste to energy vendors), or just argumentative for the sake of argument.

Rather than dismiss it, I will instead try to engage with the point.

Organics in the city could drive energy production close to its consumption. It could produce electricity, waste heat and vastly reduce transport distances.

It has been done elsewhere and is clean. Sure, there are examples of where things have gone wrong, but waste to energy is proven technology that doesn’t lead to health or environmental problems.

People are generally uncomfortable with it. Critics of waste to energy will say that it leads to all manner of problems, and can produce evidence. That evidence often feels thin, even though it is passionately believed and argued. Particularly given waste to energy is so common in Europe.

I suspect that critics just really want to say “it doesn’t feel right”. But that argument will never fly in formal approvals hearing, and so critics are forced to argue around technical aspects of the technology because that’s the only ground they are permitted to argue.

Waste to energy feels like a lazy solution. Not to say it is easy to establish a plant (it isn’t), or easy to run one (it’s not). It feels lazy because it wipes out the challenge of circulating materials through the economy. The challenge of markets is wiped out because the value of the materials burned is wiped out. The challenge of better design is wiped out, the hope of a circular economy goes up in smoke.

Everything becomes calorific value. All of that effort and energy, water and soil, nutrients, sunlight, refining and manufacturing, it’s all reduced to how much steam it can raise.

The upshot is that soil is still depleted in carbon. A more expensive solution is put in place. Value is lost, as are opportunities.

And so to fully engage in this comment, I’d have to respond that waste to energy can be part of a whole waste solution, but converting organics into energy without any benefit to soils feels wasteful.

Soil health is a pressing concern, one of humanity’s greatest challenges. FOGO is a part of that solution.

Let energy be generated from increasingly inexpensive solar and wind energy, perhaps even from converting plastics and the like to energy. Appreciate that waste to energy is quite carbon intensive.

Return nutrients and organics to soils. That’s where they belong.

There is more than enough waste to permit waste to energy even with FOGO services across the country.

Moving forward

This is a conversation that needs to continue.

I am certainly not the only person to be having this conversation. Nor the most influential.

I am passionate about ridding the world of waste. How do we do this given people will always throw things away? I think, simply, society should be smart enough to work out how to return unwanted stuff back into production.

Organics are part of that cycle, but not the only part. I am no rabid idealist. No fervent believer in an ideal state of being. I appreciate that life will always be a compromise, and that my vision is no more important than yours, and where these visions conflict we need to come to a resolution.

Instead, I try make things happen through listening, pushing forward with solutions and then adjusting as conditions evolve around us.

I think that there is more thinking to be done around how to design a system where a world without waste is the simplest way forward.

I also think that this design should minimise the role of government. Not because government is bad, but because giving government the power to create also gives it the power to take away. Why give away your power like this? Good systems should run alongside government, not rely upon government.

As Gunther Sonnenfeld, a US based contact, wrote on a different LinkedIn post in relation to food waste:

don’t rely on federal action for anything. Waste of time. This is where privatization can really work (in a public-private capacity). Think about the mechanics, then operational needs, and let’s talk

He makes an excellent point.

Long term, I believe that “pull” economics are far more powerful than “push” economics. A stable system is to have users of compost demanding compost rather than well meaning citizens pushing compost onto the users.

When there is demand, it will be met with supply. Producers or collectors of organic waste will move to fill the demand gap.

And this is the challenge behind my initial post.

The real work in waste management is to create market conditions where we can create a world without waste.

That’s a world rich in niches, a world of opportunity, a world where clever design can nudge the market conditions to solve problems we want solved.

There is a very large market opportunity available to those people who can solve this system design problem.

If you’re up for the challenge, please share this, connect and let’s work out how to progress the conversation.