Jai Pearce from the Bunbury-Harvey Regional Council takes us on a tour of the Organics Processing Facility and explains what FOGO (Food Organics and Garden Organics) is.
Hello, my name is Jai Pearce and I’m from the Bunbury-Harvey Regional Council and I’m the supervisor here at the Organics Processing Facility.
So what is FOGO? Food organics and garden organics that’s collected from your garden at home and commercial businesses that can go into your lime green, organics bin.
So I’d like to run you through the process. At home, your food scraps and garden waste will be placed in your bin and then put out onto your verge. Once the truck’s full, it comes to the composting facility where it’s tipped onto Stage 0 onto aerators and stockpiled up to one month. After that one month, the compost is then moved via loader so it helps the microbes activate, which then help break down the compost and starts the process. As part of the Australian Standards, the loader then picks up the compost and rolls it five times. This helps the product to be pasteurised. The Pasteurisation stage kills all the weeds and seeds and makes it safe for you to back to use it back at home, or in a commercial environment.
The next stage is to screen the compost to get rid of all the contaminants like plastic, glass, toasters, and all those unwanted items that we receive from your bins. The compost is then mature and ready for testing to the Australian Standards and the Australian Organics Certification. The product then is ready for sale and is ready for use.
So what can you do to help us at the Organics Facility? Please don’t put any plastic, glass or unwanted, non-organics into your bin. Either select the yellow-top bin or the red-top bin for those items.