Taking composting to the next level

Hawker College is a great school for green-thumbs, being one of a small handful of schools in the ACT that offers a Certificate II in Horticulture.

When the environmentally conscious school made the move to non-plastic alternatives, the school wanted to address how they could deal with the new waste product which couldn’t be put in standard recycling bins.

With the support of ACT Government, they trialled an in-vessel composter. In-vessel systems are those that confine the composting materials within a building, container, or vessel. In-vessel systems make it easier to control temperature, moisture, and airflow, and minimise odours.

The school feeds the composter 40 to 60 litres of food waste plus an equal quantity of wood chips and green waste about three to four times a week, but the composter could handle up to 100 litres a day.

Hawker College has also partnered with a local café to get their food scraps.

The raw waste is transformed it into compost in around three weeks and the team use the compost in our horticulture gardens and have also experimented with growing seed in small pots of compost.

The school has reduced the amount of food waste being sent to landfill.