Kimbriki has been supporting several local schools with their composting systems for many years now. The School Waste Reduction Support Program (SWRSP) is designed to support schools to remove the organic fraction from their waste stream in line with NSW Government targets towards 2030 and reduce their overall waste especially landfill waste by sorting at the source. We have been delighted to be engaged with One Meal Northern Beaches at Fisher Road SSP over the last few years and are extremely excited about this opportunity to support another joint collaboration with One Meal Northern Beaches and Cromer High Schoolโs Integrated Studies Unit. We hope this will be the start of your journey at the school to tackle organic waste in landfill so that the program might extend beyond the One Meal food scraps to the staffroom and school canteen and maybe a system across the whole school eventually.
Initially the system was set up with 5 compost bins and will accept one dayโs worth of food scraps from One Meal Northern Beaches, which can range from 75kg-90kg of food scraps a day. One Meal Northern Beaches volunteers try to use as much of the fresh food that they get donated as they can but there are always big outer leaves, watermelon rind, countless peelings and spent fruit and vegetables. The volunteers at One Meal Northern Beaches HQ chop up the food scraps as best they can and the crew of Compost Volunteers take them down to Cromer High once a week and meet the students from the Integrated Studies Unit, who are helping to manage the system. Rachel Kernaghan and Dave Lye gave the students a Compost 101 session after the students helped to set the compost system up using a process available in our Resource Hive How To Set Up An Effective School Compost System โ Kimbriki. The students now know the Composting Procedure and how to manage the composting system on a weekly basis ensuring it is aired and water to help the microbes and compost critters to break down these food scraps into beautiful soil.
Our contractors on site at Kimbriki, Australian Native Landscapes donated valuable Forest Fines mulch to be added to the system along with the food scraps which form part of our Compost Stew Recipe. It is wonderful to be using a quality recycled product. This will be combined with Coffee Chaff from Northern Beaches Coffee Roasters, leaves from the school site and mushrooms spent blocks (combination of hardwood fuel pellets, soy hulls pellets, water and mycelium) from Manly Mushrooms to create a wonderful diverse mix of โbrownsโ to add to all the food scraps.
Thanks to the kind sponsorship of Tumbleweed, we have been able to donate an additional seven compost bins to the system to bring the number to a total of 12. Not quite the 50 that are currently being operated at Fisher Rd SSP but these will at least give the fisher Rd SSP system some respite for a day a week. Ms Soraia Barry, who heads the Integrated Studies Unit, says the students have high hopes of creating beautiful soil that can be shared with the community at a market stall and raise funds for them to expand this system and their school vegetable gardens, learning some great skills along the way.
We are extremely excited about this project and look forward to supporting the Cromer High School students this year in their bid to reduce food waste going to landfill.
