THE HACKETT COMPOST COLLECTIVE
December 2019
The new community composter on Limestone Av, made of recycled mixed brown hardwoods.
January 2020
The Hackett Compost Collective is a micro-hauling, food waste recycling and compost producing social enterprise based in Canberra.
We were really glad to supply some recycled mixed brown hardwoods for their new community composting unit which has been designed and built by HCC for public use - just installed in full view on Limestone Avenue across the road from Braddon.
North Canberra residents can sign up at www.compost.org.au [click to see which suburbs HCC currently services] for collection of their household food scraps (for a small fee) using carbon neutral (or even carbon positive!) cycle-powered transport. Scraps from multiple households are then combined for efficient hot composting, resulting in compost to feed local soils in under a month.
Brook from HCC on her cycle-powered compost collector.
HCC says that composting is important to avoid the generation of landfill gases (which contribute to climate change), sequester carbon, and to improve local soils to benefit urban food production. They believe that food scraps should be recycled rather than trashed, and want to provide an alternative option to composting at individual household level which is usually very inefficient.
HCC’s goal is to slowly build up a network of composters for decentralised processing of food scraps in the urban setting. The initial composting efforts have been in backyards but they’re now purposefully building new composting hubs in full public view. When you hear community compost you may think of a compost heap hidden at the rear of a community garden, but their new composter is on proud display right on Limestone Avenue in Ainslie conveniently located outside of a community garden, so that the resulting compost can be put to good use.
The composting unit on the other side of the fence to the Ainslie community garden at the Ainslie Church of Christ.
It’s also conveniently just across the road from Braddon, where many apartment dwellers live. Quite a few of these apartment dwellers have signed up to the collection service and contribute their kitchen scraps to the cause. The Limestone Avenue composter, outside the Ainslie Church of Christ is designed with super-efficient hot composting in mind and can process half a tonne of kitchen scraps each week! And they say their superior compost management isn’t just impressively productive, it also avoids the issues of pests and odour.
HCC’s next goal is to put a community composting hub on public land. This is quite an exciting development and as far as they know could be a world first. It’s testament to the fact that the ACT government is committed to being a world leader in climate action. The new composter will be installed at the Hackett shops and similarly to the Limestone composter at the community garden is expected to beautify the local area rather than detract from it. The new composter is funded by an ACTSmart Community Zero Emissions grant and aims to get more of our Canberra community engaged with composting, reducing food waste and contributing to urban greening as a package of climate actions.
The unit has been cleverly designed to allow efficient turning of the hot compost by HCC’s volunteers.
If more people sign on to the collective and pay a small monthly fee then we’ll see a lot of these composting hubs popping up in Canberra suburbs.
Head to www.compost.org.au to sign up or learn more.
The resulting compost. Our soils tend to be depleted in organic matter, and the easiest way to add it back is with compost.