WHICH BIN TIPS
What happens with green bin materials?
Once collected from your kerbside, your food and garden organics are taken to a local composting facility. In South Australia, there are 2 large commercial composting facilities in operation – Jeffries and Peats.
At the composting facility, materials are placed in windrows – long rows that make it easy for the materials to be mixed and aerated – and are composted for 8 to 10 weeks to mature.
Once the materials are matured and have broken down, they’re screened to remove any contaminants, such as plastic bags, irrigation pipe, glass and metal, that have been incorrectly placed in a green bin – but this process is difficult and expensive, and any contaminants still left behind will decrease the quality of the end product, so it’s important to use your green bin properly.
The screening process involves a number of steps, including machines sucking out plastic through a vacuum, large magnets extracting metals, machinery removing and sorting glass, stone ceramics and rocks, and optical sorting technology to remove remaining plastics, textiles and rubber.
Once the screening process is complete and contaminants have been removed, nutrient-rich compost, soil and mulch products are produced, and used on South Australian farms and vineyards, and in household gardens as well.