Get to know your FOGO service

Neil Harris: I’m Neil Harris, farmer in Central Victoria. We run a specialised agricultural industry dealing mostly in livestock and a few cattle, predominantly grassland pastures. We’ve been here a couple of generations.

Craig Johnstone : We convert all the green organics from the councils and we turn that into a nice compost and that goes out to our agricultural farmers. We would get 60 trucks a day on this particular facility. Since the inception of this site, we've actually received over a million tonnes of organic material. All of that has been diverted from landfill which is fantastic. We get our standard green waste, which is grass clippings and tree prunings, but those little food scraps and food organics, they are essential because they provide additional nutrients. Basically, we clean the organics that come in, we take all the waste components out of it. We then grind it up into smaller particle sizes. We then put it into what we call an in-vessel system. So basically, it's like a big silo that has aeration runs through it.

The organic material from this site is a great soil conditioner for our farmers. It helps maintain their soils in a natural process.

Neil Harris,

18 months ago, we put 20 tonne of compost to the hectare on this paddock. There's an abundance of green, as you can see in the landscape here and so forth. It's all being driven by compost holding more moisture. Where we take the paddock up the back on the hill hasn't had that same amount of compost put on it, and the grass is a bit drier.

Craig Johnstone: The soil condition used on site for farmers can be used to substitute for fertilisers any chemicals they may use. This is what the compost looks like after the pasteurisation process.

Neil Harris: The green waste I receive from the council, I'm really excited about it. It's what I call a dual-purpose fertiliser. There's lots of nutrients in it as well as a lot of live, actual biology in the soil. It's good for my soil but it's good for all soils. Our nutrient density increases which produces more nutrient dense foods for quicker turnover and healthy livestock, like driving a Formula One car would really accelerates and lasts and yeah, runs at full revs.

Graphic end slide. Thank you for helping to make more compost.