This past Thursday our Global and Regional Sustainability course was able to visit the Regional Resource Recovery Centre. I was amazed at how efficient their systems were. This was the first time that I had ever seen these methods used in order to turn general waste into compost. I can’t believe that everything in the general waste bin in Australia goes into the composting facility. In California, we have three bins: general waste, recycling, and yard waste. I know that our yard waste gets recycled, but general waste? No way! The turbines that the compost is created in are massive and I was surprised at how much plastic they were able to remove from the finished product. Unfortunately, they were not able to get much of the glass out of the compost, which makes it so that RRRC is only allowed to sell the finished compost to agriculture businesses. I hope that one day the process is able to remove all of the glass so that community members can come and buy compost from RRRC to use in their home gardens.
I was thankful for the free goodies that we were given on site. The biodegradable trash bag is such a great product and I hope that in the future these become more common and less expensive. I have gotten much use from my reusable bag and reusable produce bags as well. These simple items, if used by everyone, can have a HUGE effect and lessen the garbage that goes into our landfills.
This experience really made me want to start my own compost bin once I go home to the states. It would benefit my family because we would be recycling food waste and would also assist our garden by providing the plants with crucial nutrients.
Getting a tour of the site gives me a sense of hope for the future. If more sites like this convert to the system that RRRC uses and start to create their own compost, our waste can be recycled and reused instead of poured into a landfill. I hope that other resource recovery centres will learn from RRRC and see how much they are able to provide from municipal waste. This trip also encourages me to enforce recycling in my flat in the student village so that it can end up at RRRC and be reused once again. My flatmates have been getting extremely lazy about recycling and I often find recycling mixed in with the general waste. Recycling is definitely going to be a topic that is covered at the next flatmate meeting. Recycle right!
Earth & Perth 