Mayor Cynthia Watson:
..fellow councillors who are here tonight welcome you to the Climate Action Plan Community Webinar. And I, before we start, acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are meeting. I'm pleased to be here tonight as part of this broad community engagement for our new Climate Action Plan after my fellow councillors and I resolved to develop this plan as part of our final council meeting in December 2019. So it's been quite a journey so far and more to go.
With Council's current Our Low Carbon Future Strategy coming to an end this year, our vision is to bring together the wide range of policies, strategies, action plans and other initiatives which deliver on Council's commitment to the environment as well as to set the direction for the future.
While our council officers have expertise and ideas to assist in the development of this new plan, to be truly successful, we must ensure that the views, ideas and knowledge of our community underpins any future decisions and actions. Community involvement needs to go beyond the planning and we need our residents to be involved in the execution of this new plan to ensure we can make a real difference and decrease our environmental footprint together, because we all care about where we live.
Phase one of community consultation is currently open until 14 September and we are inviting everyone who lives, works, studies and visits Boroondara to have a say. During this phase, we are seeking to understand how important our Climate Action Plan is to you. You are at the centre of everything that we do and we need to know what you think should be included as a priority in the plan as well as any big ideas you have on the way forward.
Once your feedback has been consolidated, we will be checking back in with the community during phase two of the consultation to ensure we have heard you correctly and captured what's most important. We will also explore some of the key themes which have emerged with interested members of our community. Early next year, Council will prepare a draft of the new Climate Action Plan. When this is ready, we will open up the draft of the community feedback. We want you to be involved in every step of its development.
During this period of consultation, there are also a number of online sustainability workshops being run as part of our Living for our Future program. On Saturday, we held an All Things Reusable workshop. Tomorrow night, there is one focused on home energy savings. Very topical, 'cause we're all at home. This has become increasingly important and continues to be so. Make sure you check out the other virtual workshops scheduled which includes a composting and worm farming session - and at this point, can I say, "My family has worms," and have you take it the completely right way? - pickling and preserving class, a Boroondara wildlife show - great entertainment for families with kids - and a balcony biodiversity session for those in apartments.
Tonight is about exploring different perspectives on environmental sustainability. We have three fabulous presenters who will provide various professional insights and, we hope, generate different thoughts about the challenges, opportunities, perspectives and sometimes dilemmas environmental sustainability brings. Shortly I'll hand over to Dr Rebecca Huntley. Dr Huntley is one of Australia's most respected social researchers and the author of a new book, 'How To Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference'.
Dr Huntley will be followed by Dr Graeme Lorimer, who is a founder of Biosphere and a researcher, consultant and expert in Melbourne's biodiversity. Lastly, we will welcome Miss Tania Hall from waste management company Cleanaway. Miss Hall will touch on what happens to your FOGO material after it is collected from your curbside bin and why this service plays such an important role in Boroondara's future sustainability.
And this program has just been the most enormous success so far in Boroondara, with being able to increase our diversion rate by 20%. It's absolutely phenomenal, and the whole program hasn't actually rolled out yet. There's more to come, so it's incredibly exciting. And as someone who's actually held and smelt the fabulous product that comes out the other end, I'm extremely excited and very supportive of this particular initiative.
So thank you once again, everyone, for joining us tonight, and I encourage you, if you haven't already, to share your thoughts and feedback by participating in the current Climate Action Plan consultation survey after tonight's discussion. So absolutely enough about me, and look forward to hearing from Dr Huntley. So, Dr Huntley, over to you.
Dr Rebecca Huntley: Hi! Can you hear me, all, now? I was muted previously. Wonderful. I'm going to share my screen. Oh! I knew that would happen. They're my beautiful children. You don't want to see my beautiful children. You do want to see that. Thank you so much. I'm coming all the way from a COVID-affected but not locked-down Sydney, and it is really a privilege and a pleasure to be talking to you tonight. I really relish the work that I do with local councils. In fact, I've been doing quite a lot of it recently, and in writing my book, I recognise the significant role that local councils can play as brokers of the community's concerns around climate and sustainability. And, you know, really everything starts from that very local community level. So this is terrific to be part of this.
I'm going to cover three things very quickly, because we had a bit of a late start this evening. The first... I'm an expert in community attitudes around a whole range of things, but I'm going to just canvass where the community is right now on climate change and environmental issues, talk about the important role that local government can play and a few insights in terms of what's happened during the pandemic to people's attitudes towards climate change.
So if we cast our minds back, it feels like a very, very long time ago that we had some extreme fires over the summer. It was an interesting period of time in terms of people in my job to measure whether the extreme fires over the summer had actually changed people's views about climate change. You can see there some research that had been done by The Australia Institute that showed that there was a 10% increase in people who are very concerned about climate change over that period from July 2019 to January 2020. You can see that that was largely... So people who were already concerned became a bit more concerned.
However, other research that we did post the fires showed that for some people, the fires were climate change, you know, in action. For other people, it wasn't. So it was one of many, many pieces of research that I do on climate change which shows that people respond differently to the issue. They find different ways into it. And in anything we do in the area of climate change and sustainability, we have to acknowledge the different positions that people are coming from and find a way to find some common ground.
So in... In response to that work, and I write about it in my book and have been doing something about that more recently, I realise that we do have to have a recognition that different members of the community come at climate change, which has been a big public conversation for some time, from different perspectives. So there is a spectrum of views - everything from people who are quite alarmed and concerned about climate change to people for whom the issue isn't particularly engaging and other people who are more cautious and doubtful about the impacts of climate change as well as perhaps some of the solutions that are being proffered.
Here you can see - I'm very excited to share this with you - very, very fresh data of something called the Climate Compass which I've been involved in, a research project that I've been involved in, which shows very generally the different ways that the Australian community fall, you know, when it comes to climate change. So you've got about... You know, you've got about...about a little over half of the community either alarmed, alert or concerned about climate change and then you've got the rest, everywhere from what we would call people who deny climate change is happening to people who are disengaged from the issue to people who are quite cautious. And by cautious, they're really concerned about how quickly we can make that transition to renewable energy without costing jobs, without affecting the economy.
Now, of course this plays out differently, slightly differently, depending on...in terms of how these segments fall in terms of what state you're in, in terms of what location you are. But in every state and in both regional, outer urban and inner urban communities, there are always these segments and pretty much that same kind of quantum across the board. So what you've got, really, is on climate change and sustainability, looking at it from a segmented view, quite a polarised... It can polarise communities. That being said, there is an enormous amount of common ground about climate and sustainability solutions.
So one of the things that's really important to remember about climate change - and this is not going to alter any time soon - is that priorities, attitudes to messages, messengers and consumption of media differs according to segments. So if you're somebody who's alarmed, then you are happy to talk about climate change to other people, sign a petition, post on social media about your concern.
If you're cautious on climate change and sustainability issues, it doesn't mean that you aren't supportive of initiatives that you think have value or you think are going to be good for the community. If you're cautious, for you, it's less about signing petitions and more about things like eating locally sourced food and reducing food waste. If you're concerned about climate change, you still might feel a bit anxious about, let's say, talking about climate change on social media. Your focus might be more on reducing car usage or energy efficiency at home.
But what the segmentation shows is there are some things that almost all the Australian community can agree on. People want energy-efficient communities because they see that as giving both value today and impact on the community in the future. They want the ability of people, if they want to, to ride their bicycles to work, if they can. They want... And I think in the time of lockdown, we've seen a renewed value on green spaces and local spaces where people can exercise and gather and continue to do the community activities that they value.
There is a lot of focus on waste, whether it be food waste or whether it be plastics waste. That, of course, you can have, you know, universal agreement about the need for all levels of government to prioritise that. So while there might be differences across segments, there's lots of common ground that we can all come together on when it comes to action around sustainability and climate issues. So waste, energy and green spaces being three of those main issues.
I think I might just move quickly, because I think we're going to run out of time. I just wanted to show you very briefly what has happened to the climate and sustainability issues during COVID. And here's an interesting piece of research done kind of really when COVID first hit by Ipsos, which is a big global research company, really asking about whether people thought that actions around climate change should remain a priority even in a time of COVID.
And you can see here where different countries sit on this, and you can see Australia sits, you know, at the bottom but still at a significant percentage, at 57% of people, that still think that government should care about climate change even during economic recovery. Interestingly, you've got China up there at 80% of people agreeing with that statement, even though China has been much more significantly affected both in terms of health and economics in an economic sense. Places like Italy as well.
So I think what that shows is that Australians... And I think if you did that survey now, what I think is really interesting is that particularly for you Victorians while you're under lockdown, people recognise that this isn't so much a short-term crisis as a new way of living that might continue for 12-18 months, and so we need to work out how can we continue to do the things that our community values even in a time of the pandemic. There we are. Thank you very much. I look forward to answering questions at the end of all the talks. Oh!
Mathew Dixon: I'll just hand straight over to Graeme, who's going to give the next presentation. Thanks, Graeme.
Sorry, Graeme, you had... Your microphone was muted. You're OK now.
Dr Graeme Lorimer: OK. I did actually unmute it, Mat. You did say that there could be a problem with one of us overriding the other. Mat, wave to me to make sure I know I'm on. Good. OK. I'll start again. The impacts of climate change on humans can be profound, but think about the wild flora and fauna. They don't have the option of just moving house or turning on an air conditioner. They're stuck with it. So for those reasons, indigenous flora and fauna and the wider biodiversity in Boroondara is very important when we're thinking about climate change in Boroondara.
What I'm going to do in my 15 minutes is talk about what trends have been occurring in the native and introduced flora and fauna, and what the reasons for those changes are. And I'm going to do that by going right back 10,000 years before European settlement of Boroondara, and I'll take it right through to the present, and that will hopefully help you decide what might be good things to do in response to climate change.
Now, for those 10,000 years before settlement, the environment of Boroondara was in a state of equilibrium between the Aborigines and the flora and the fauna. Of course, the flora and fauna were all indigenous at that stage, and the landscape for those 10,000 years through Boroondara would have been essentially a park-like environment with occasional thickets of shrubbery.
Now, I'm going to try doing something fancy here and show you how we know that that is the case. I'm hoping that you can now see an historical map from 19... Sorry, 1835, where we can see Port Phillip Bay there. It extends right down to Point Nepean and over to the Surf Coast and so on. The Dandenong Ranges is over on the right there. And it has rectangles with numbers. They're the very first settlers who took up lots around Melbourne.
Now, there isn't much written around the Boroondara part of the map. But, now, if I can just neatly move something away here... I've got an obstruction here. No, I can't do it.
Let me tell you that just over the border of Boroondara on the other side of the Yarra... You can probably read it, but I've got something that's intervening. It says something like, well, to the effect that it's a park-like landscape with lots of grass. And further over towards Merri Creek, it says open plains. So that's what the landscape was like back then.
And the trees at that stage would have been, or nearly all, very large. As large as the largest trees that we have today. So the landscape was rather different. And because there was that continuity of vegetation across the landscape, animals were able to move around the landscape as they must do in order to meet their seasonal needs, for example to find summer breeding grounds or feeding grounds or to move around the landscape where there's more water during a drought.
The plants also had the capacity from generation to generation to move around the landscape because there was just a continuous natural environment, which is quite different from today. And again, because there was a constant continuous cover of vegetation, and also because there was practically no impervious surfaces, rainfall that landed on the ground percolated into the ground, recharged the watertable, and the watertable gradually fed the streams. So even the smallest of gullies would have had water flowing year-round. And the Yarra would have flooded, Gardiners Creek would have flooded periodically, but for the most part, it would have had a fairly steady flow, much more so than we see today. So the streams have changed. Droughts would have been occurring during those 10,000 years prior to settlement, but probably not as prolonged as our millennium drought or certainly as the more serious droughts that we're now facing with climate change.
So, we had this 10,000 years in which there is a sort of harmony or equilibrium between Aborigines and flora and fauna. And to give you a few statistics about what the status of the flora and fauna was, I'm going to try sharing my screen again. And you can see there that, based on my work, the City of Boroondara would have had roughly 400 species of plants. I say would have had. These are all the ones that we actually know to have existed. There are probably other species in all these categories that went extinct from Boroondara long before anybody bothered to write them down. But we have records of 400 species of plants, 60 birds, 20 mammals, 10 frogs, 10 reptiles and 15 fish species. That's what we had back then.
And then along came the settlers, so I'd like now to jump forward to around 1945. So, by then, the Aborigines have been well and truly displaced from the landscape, and their land management practices had ceased. And the land was cleared multiple times by 1945. The whole of Victoria has hardly any old-growth forest left. But by 1945, our forefathers had left very few trees, very little native vegetation at all.
How do we know that? Well, there's this great website that I would suggest that you have a look at. I'm going to show you a demonstration of it. Just give me a moment while I swap to that. And in a moment, I will be able to do this. It's not going to play the game very well. I'll just have to move around a bit for a moment. OK, now I can do it.
OK. I've now got the website up, and up in the top, you'll see...
Mathew Dixon: Sorry, Graeme, it's just Mat. Oh, that's fine now.
Dr Graeme Lorimer:
OK. Up at the top, you'll see the address 1945.melbourne. It's not a very familiar sort of website because it doesn't have any www or anything. That's the whole URL or web address - 1945.melbourne. And when you go there on your web browser, you will be confronted with a screen like the one you see here, where there is a thing at the top there in the amber colour where it says '1945' with an arrow to the left and 'Now', an arrow to the right. And so, on the left hand side of the screen, you will see a black-and-white aerial photograph of the Melbourne area taken in 1945. And on the right, we have the latest Google satellite image. And the amber thing at the top there can be slid backwards and forwards so that you can swap backwards and forwards between 1945 and the present landscape. You're also able to move around and zoom in, as I'll do in a moment.
So, let's have a look at what we've got on the screen at the moment. Towards the bottom left, we've got the centre of Melbourne, and around this area, we've got Yarra Bend Park. And I'm going to zoom in on that area so that we can see what it's like now and what it used to be like. And I'm going to slide backwards and forwards. You'll find that this looks a lot better if you do it yourself, but you'll get the gist of it.
Over on the left here, in Yarra Bend Park, we see 1945, and as I move the slider across, you'll see, hopefully, that there are a heck of a lot more trees there. If you look at other parts of that Yarra corridor in 1945 and now, you'll see vastly more tree cover now than back then. I'd also like you to have a look at the size of the trees that are present at the moment. In certain areas, you can see the size of individual trees. Now have a look at what size the trees were in 1945. They were mostly saplings or quite immature trees.
And it isn't just along the Yarra. If I just randomly move across to somewhere over here. Let's have a look. Around here, for example. As I scroll backwards and forwards, you will see that areas that used to have rather sparse small trees now almost always have more trees and bigger trees. Street trees. If I have a look along this road... What's that one? Not sure which road that is, but you'll see a few tiny dots. They're saplings, the street trees. And now... I'm not seeing them there, but on most streets, you'll find that big change.
Alright, you can have my beautiful visage back again now. And I just need to do something over here. OK, so, there's been a huge change in the landscape as a result of that fragmenta... Sorry, of the removal of trees, clearing more than once, and we've now got bigger trees than there were back in 1945, though not as big on average as would have been there prior to settlement.
Now, as a result of the removal of all the vegetation and the replacement of it with so many impermeable surfaces, the streams started to no longer flow as frequently or with the same consistency, and instead became more pulsed, with bigger flushes coming through straight after rain and then dropping more profoundly in between.
And the watertables also dropped because it wasn't possible for so much water to seep in. And as the watertable drops, that's a particular problem for the flood plains and wetlands because they are sustained by the watertable. So there was a substantial change in the capacity of the plants and the animals to sustain themselves on flood plains and in wetlands.
Also, the remaining native vegetation was fragmented, and so all those movements that I was talking about, of animals to meet their seasonal needs or in response to drought, the needs of plants to move around as the climate changed and so on, has all reduced because the habitat is fragmented, and each species' populations in many cases reduce down to genetically isolated sub-populations that then start to have breeding problems. So fragmentation has been a significant issue. And all of these things went... Or rather, the clearing and the consequences of the clearing kept on going apace until around 1980, when things started to turn around.
During that same period up until 1980, there were numerous introductions of plants and animals, things like blackberries and foxes and rats and things like that. So as a result, many species of flora and fauna died out and many of the remainder were on tenterhooks. So, that's the way things had progressed up to 1945.
I'd like to take us now through to the present. And let's start with the land and the water. The landscape is, as I've shown you with that 1945.melbourne website, much greener than it used to be. That's very important for sustaining the remaining flora and fauna, indigenous flora and fauna, and it's also important for humans because it helps to moderate the climate, having a canopy of trees and that sort of thing. And in order to maintain...
Well, let's see. There are two reasons why we've got the additional cover of trees. One is because, in gardens and on nature strips, there have been more planting of trees, and the trees that were planted last century have in many cases become larger. They've matured. So that's one of the reasons why there's more greenery. From the point of view of the indigenous flora and fauna, the more important thing is the additional greening that's occurred as a result of allowing vegetation, native vegetation, to grow, particularly in those conservation parks, such as along the main streams, where most of the larger conservation parks are. And there's also been the fostering of the flora and fauna by people such as the dedicated team at the City of Boroondara who are day by day looking after the native vegetation that remains and planting additional indigenous vegetation and removing weeds and all those sorts of things.
And in addition, there is the assistance of - as I just try and share my screen again - eight friends groups in Boroondara busily helping the Council and doing the right thing by the indigenous flora and fauna. I wanted to make sure that they were properly recognised in their role for looking after things. There's also the Parks Victoria people looking after Yarra Bend Park.
Now, with the increase in impermeable surfaces and in conjunction with climate change, we now have three problems that have arisen. The stream flows have been getting more and more pulsed into flushes after a rain event and going dry afterwards. The watertable continues to drop and the soil has continued to dry. And that's a particular problem for the wetlands and flood plains. And the response of Council and Melbourne Water is a thing called Water Sensitive Urban Design that you may have come across.
I'm going to try swapping again through to my other slideshow. Now, let's see. It's coming. There's a bit of a lag any time I try doing this.
Right, Water Sensitive Urban Design is arranged with capturing run-off from residential developments or playing fields and so on. As in the case of the Glen Eira wetlands here, it also comes off the freeway there and the water is channelled into wetlands, which help purify the water and capture it so that it can filter into the watertable and be released more slowly into the streams, create less erosion and so on. So, that's a response to the problems of what's been happening with the watertable.
Sorry.
Now, whilst all this is going on, we've got the indigenous flora and fauna steadily changing because of all the changing conditions with the climate and the drying of the soils and so on. And we've got changes going on in both the indigenous plants and animals and the introduced ones. So, if I go to my slideshow again... Please go quickly. Right, I'll give you a few examples of some of the species that are changing. Some of the original flora and fauna are barely hanging on. There's only a handful of echidnas left in Boroondara, if that. There are a range of plant species like the grey parrot-pea down the bottom right of this slide which are also in very small numbers and barely hanging on. Amongst the species which are still rare but are seeming to hang on OK, there are species like eastern grey kangaroos, which seem to be adapting to the urban environment, and sugar gliders, which are still hanging on in places like around the Burke Road Billabong. So we've got a few in that category where they're rare, but not really decreasing.
On the other hand, we've got species that were never rare - they used to be abundant - but are becoming rare. Things like the white-plumed honeyeater, which people of my age will remember as about the most common bird species in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, but not anymore. And amongst the butterflies, I have noticed an amazing collapse of native butterfly populations over the past couple of decades. Species like the marbled xenica at the bottom right there. Birds - many people know their birds and you would have seen big changes in bird populations. Whilst the white-plumed honeyeater has decreased, there are numerous parrots, including the cockatoo, such as these corellas, which have greatly increased. And amongst plants, we have similar situations with species like the small-leafed Clematis, which used to be around a bit but is now much more prevalent in the landscape.
So there have been some real changes going on, and it isn't just in the indigenous flora and fauna. Amongst the introduced species, there have been declines in honey bees and a range of other insects, and the house sparrow, which used to be extremely abundant and now not quite so much so these days. On the other hand, some of the introduced species of flora and fauna are on the increase, particularly the flora. And I've chosen two examples here - the white bladder-flower and Mexican love-grass. And both of these species have been increasing because they are particularly well adapted to hotter and drier climates. And so that might be associated with climate change.
So, we've got all of these changes going on in the landscape. The ones that concern me most, I think, are the insects because the changes in insects isn't just a local thing. It's a global scale thing. And humanity and the indigenous flora and fauna of the world are all extremely reliant on insects.
So, there is a lot of change going on. Some of it you might regard as good and some of it's not so good. We're certainly living in a time of change, though. The things that I'm most concerned about in Boroondara are along the floodplains, including their wetlands. And that's for three main reasons. Firstly, those corridors on the flood plains are where most of the indigenous biodiversity is located in Boroondara. That's where you'll see the wide range of bird species and insects and plants and so on. Flood plains are also the most life-giving of habitats in the landscape because they have excess moisture still and they have more nutrients which propagate down from higher up in the slopes. So they give rise to the greatest photosynthesis and birdlife and all that sort of stuff. And finally, the wetlands and flood plains are also the environments most susceptible to climate change.
That, I hope, sums up the trends that have been occurring, going back 10,000 years, and what's happening at the moment and what's causing it. And I hope that understanding those changes and their causes might help you contribute to the Climate Action Plan.
And with that, I'll pass over to Tania Hall from Cleanaway.
Tania Hall: Hello, all.
Mathew Dixon: Thanks, Graeme. I'm just transferring over to Tania.
Tania Hall: Hi, all. I hope you're all well. I'd just like to thank you all for inviting me into your homes tonight. We've just put together a little presentation, and I'd just like to share it with you. So, my name is Tania, and I'm from Cleanaway. I'm one of our key account managers. And I look after our landfills, our resource recovery centres, Clayton, Lysterfield and Brooklyn, our South East Organics, as well as our South East Transfer Stations.
A little bit about Cleanaway. So, Cleanaway is Australia's largest waste management company. Our mission is to make a sustainable future possible. We have over 6,000 employees, 115 prize assets across 260 sites. 4,000... Sorry, Mat.
Mathew Dixon: Sorry!
Tania Hall: That's alright. Sorry. 4,500 vehicles. And we're ASX 100 listed.
So, what I wanted to talk about tonight is just have a bit of a chat on waste minimisation. And this is to reduce the volume of waste that goes into landfill, and it's a priority for national, state and many local governments. In Victoria, it's believed that FOGO makes up approximately 50% of household garbage, with food comprising 39% by weight in our metro areas. By diverting FOGO from landfill, this represents a significant opportunity for councils to support their communities to reduce waste to landfill and to produce compost for a circular economy.
Dean? To the right if you can. Thank you. So, what is FOGO? So, FOGO is Food Organics and Garden Organics. It's a really cool tagline going on and it's going to be around for a long time. The theory is if it was once alive, it can go in your FOGO bin. So apples, bananas, carrots, cucumbers, please take the plastic off. Eggs, dairy, so forth, put it in. Leave out your plastics, leave out your rubbish.
Next, please.
So, closed loop FOGO recycling. So, to me it's quite simple. We, as residents, we buy our food. As residents, we place the food scraps into the bins. No plastics, no contamination. Collection companies come round. They grab it, they pick up your bins, flip your bins. We take it to our facility. It is decontaminated and shredded, then sent through a composting partner. The composting partner then sends it on to be used in farms, local parks or gardens. Farmers grow vegetables and the residents buy the food, and we start the process again. It's a nice closed loop solution for us.
So, Cleanaway, we did have an organics facility on the site of a landfill. But when FOGO was becoming introduced, we purpose-built a facility in 2018, and we commissioned it in January 2019. This facility can process approximately 150,000 tonnes of FOGO per year.
I did have a little video, but it's not playing. So apologies. We'll skip that.
So, the video would have shown that the councils tip off their FOGO, which is our Food Organics Garden Organics, into SEOF, which is our South East Organics Facility. So, our yellow gear loads the FOGO into our hopper. The internal wheel then separates the dense volume and the clumps and levels the FOGO out. From there, it goes up an elevated conveyor. And this goes into our first sorting cabin.
In the sorting cabin, the first sorting cabin, we have four people working on there. The conveyor feeds up into this sorting cabin. The four employees sort through this FOGO to look for the contamination and to pull it out. They're on an elevated level and they drop in the contamination into bins underneath. So, our most common contamination that we do find are dog toys, beer cans, beer bottles, fake grass, pavers, bags of green waste and bags of food waste. Please stop putting these in!
The sorting screen then drops the finds onto its own conveyor and sends this direct to a green shred pile. The sorting screen breaks the FOGO down to a smaller level again before it hits our second sorting cabin. The second sorting cabin has two employees decontaminating and taking your waste out, and once again dropping it into landfill bins below. This is then followed by a magnetic belt and then it goes through a Crambo shredder.
So, what is compost? Compost is organic matter which has been produced through a process called composting. This generally takes 4 to 12 weeks. The pasteurisation process lasts for around 7 to 14 days if used with an 'in-vessel' composting process. The compost is then moved to open windrows, where it goes through a further maturisation process for a further 12 weeks.
Composting dates back over 12,000 years. It's nothing new. Archaeological evidence suggests that composting has been in progress since the Neolithic times. These early farmers probably didn't bother spreading the compost either. The researchers believe they constructed the piles on the land and then just ran their ploughs straight through them.
Did you know a worm has five hearts, no teeth and no eyes? And a worm can eat its own body weight of food in one day, which I'm sure is what we all feel like in the world of COVID. And contrary to popular belief, if you cut a worm in two, it will most likely die. So, in-vessel composting. This is used to pre-treat prescribed waste received into sites. The optimum temperature to operate is approximately 55 degrees. This does change slightly, depending on the composters. The temperature can reach up to 75 degrees in three days. However, if the temperature gets too hot, then this can overcook the bacteria and cause ash rather than soils. This temperature must be maintained for at least 72 hours, and the 55-degree temperature kills propagules, regrowth, pathogens and other bacterias.
What is open windrow composting? So, SORF, which is our Soil Organic Recycling Facility, is situated in Dutson Downs and is over 8,000 hectares and is currently licensed by the EPA to accept 250,000 tonnes of organic waste. Once this is processed, this produces approximately 60,000 tonne of AS4454 - the Australian Standards Compost - per annum. Open windrow composting uses naturally occurring microbes which feed on the organic material, so food waste and organic waste, and requires oxygen. The microbes break down the organic material. The rows are turned to improve porosity and oxygen content, mix in or remove moisture, and redistribute cooler and hotter portions of the pile.
SORF has the capacity to manage 70 windrows at a time, and each windrow can contain 180 to 200 tonne of compost per row.
The attached photo on the left is actually a windrow turner in action, which is turning the compost during the maturation process. It's a hugely important piece of equipment and supports in maintaining the temperatures and the moisture throughout the production cycle, which in turn brings it to the Australian Standards Compost.
So, cooked bones in your FOGO bin is a question we get asked all the time. So, cooked bones we cannot accept in your FOGO bin. Uncooked bones is where the inside of the bone has blood vessels and marrow, and this will decay a lot faster than the outside. The outside of the bones are made of minerals like calcium, and microbial decomposers such as a bacteria do not feed on the minerals like calcium, so therefore make them difficult to break down. Due to the size of the uncooked bones, sometimes all the bone is unable to be broken down in our composting process, and the non-decomposed section will end up being part of the end process which does end up in landfill. Just repeating, cooked bones - don't put them in.
Synthetic fertilisers versus composting. So, what is a synthetically derived fertiliser? So, it's man-made inorganic compounds usually derived from the petroleum industry, ammonium nitrate, ammonium phosphate, superphosphate and potassium sulphate. It's fast-acting, comes in liquids and pallets, and is water-soluble. This is taken up by our plants immediately, but it is a quick hit only and it does need to continually be reapplied. It doesn't stimulate the soil life and it can burn plants and the fertiliser can leach into waterways.
What is organically derived fertiliser? It's fertilisers derived from living things, plants or animals, and our FOGO. It stimulates beneficial microorganisms, improves the structure of the soil. It lowers the NPK analysis - so your nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium - more so than synthetic. It won't burn or damage the plants, and it feeds plants for a longer period of time.
Did you know that the Australian brush turkey builds piles of decomposing vegetation? The heat from these homemade compost piles is used to heat and incubate their eggs so they don't have to sit on them. The largest nests are on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, where the average mound is approximately 2.7 cubic metres and weighs about 6,800 kilos.
Composting has many uses. It's used on parks and gardens. It's used on cattle beef farms for high grass yields, on dairy farms for the high grass yields, and on vegetable farms for water retention benefits and long-lasting nutrients, on vineyards for nutrients, as well as on soils that have previously been depleted of nutrients.
A leek and vegetable farm in Gippsland, they'd been trialling different composts for over 10 years, and since using a composting product each year, it's helped build the carbon back up and it's made the soil much easier to manage. The water-holding abilities are great, and the farm is probably using 25% less water. A cattle farm in Gippsland, previously on their soil tests, it shows the soils are acidic within the area. Compost has helped straighten that up to make the soils healthier on the cattle farm. Healthy soils grow better grass.
So, think before you bin it. It goes from plate to the FOGO bin, to a composter, to a farm, back to your plate. Ensure you don't contaminate your FOGO bins. Microplastics are very small pieces of plastic waste. Their presence in oceans and waterways has received a great deal of scientific and media attention in recent years, and we don't want to see microplastics on farmlands. Support your local farmers is probably another message I'd like to get across today as well.
So, composting for a sustainable future. Thank you all for your time.
Mathew Dixon: Thank you very much, Tania. So, we've run nearly till 7 o'clock. So, we're just going to take three quick questions that people have put in the Q&A. I will also acknowledge we've got a lot of comments in the Q&A and we are taking note of those and we'll be considering them in our consultation. I also ask those people that have put comments in the Q&A to really...to jump onto the survey and give us your feedback on the Climate Action Plan, what you think is important and what should be included.
So, I've got three quick questions, one for each of our panellists, starting with Rebecca, who I've just turned your microphone on, Rebecca. The question is about the change in attitudes about sustainability since COVID. You did talk about measuring people's attitudes at the start of the COVID pandemic. Is there any data to show or are you able to just clarify a bit more how much people's attitudes have changed about that?
Dr Rebecca Huntley: Yeah, so we saw in a lot of the measurements that environment and climate change did slide down the kind of list of priority issues for Australians, and have been superseded by things like health and the economy, and that's pretty understandable. I saw that happen in 2007 where climate change and environment kind of shot up on the issues that mattered to people and then slid down when the global financial crisis happened. But I think what the pattern generally is, is that these issues remain in the top five issues for Australians and they slide up and down depending on what's happening with the economy.
So, I think what is going to be interesting to watch, because, you know, it's a bit of a cliché, we're in unprecedented times, but as we become kind of used to the idea that we are living in a pandemic that might extend for, like I said, 12 to 18 months to two years, you'll start to see, particularly if we have another bushfire season like we had last year, climate change come back. And we have also seen this year even during the pandemic a range of big organisations make some pretty significant statements in relation to climate. We've had First State Super say that they are going to completely divest away from fossil fuels. Very quickly we've had a whole range of statements. So, we're still seeing players doing things on climate change. They're just having to connect it also with economic recovery, which has been critical. So, we'll start to see climate change...get together.
Mathew Dixon: We just lost you a little bit there at the end, Rebecca. But I think we've done pretty well to have our first technical glitch at this point.
Dr Rebecca Huntley: Yes!
Mathew Dixon: So the next...
Mayor Cynthia Watson: Mathew, you're on mute. We can't hear you, anything you're saying.
Mathew Dixon: Sorry, thank you.
Mayor Cynthia Watson: Can you start again?
Mathew Dixon: I muted myself. Graeme, I know you did address this a little bit at the end of your presentation, but the question that we had coming through was what would be your number one tip for helping our biodiversity in Boroondara, either for individual people in Boroondara or for Council, or a collaboration?
Dr Graeme Lorimer: Oh, I can only have one, can I? Gee. I'd like to have more than one because in our own day-to-day lives there are all manner of things that we can do to address climate change, and that's what the Climate Action Plan is working towards. There are numerous things. Many of you probably watched the 'Planet A' program on ABC last night. So, I think they're all important issues, but I'll perhaps focus more on what people can do for the local Boroondara flora and fauna and more targeted. There are things that you can do in your own backyard, front yard, on the nature strip, and City of Boroondara has the wonderful program called Backyard Biodiversity that I've been involved with since its inception quite some years ago. And I'd encourage people if they have an interest in trying to provide habitat for native insects, lizards, birds, all those sorts of things, look into Backyard Biodiversity, and that will not only be good for the plants and animals, it's also extremely good for people. In a situation like the COVID-19 pandemic, engagement with nature is really important for people's mental wellbeing, and even just getting out and into the natural areas is good for your health, wellbeing, it's good for childhood development, quality of life, all of those sorts of things.
And then, as I mentioned before, there are those friends groups that do work in the natural areas, and I'm sure Council would be very pleased to welcome more people into those friends groups. So, you can be a volunteer, and that again not only benefits the flora and fauna, it also benefits the volunteers, because there's all sorts of benefits, such as being part of a like-minded group and working together in a nurturing sort of way and seeing the results that come from that, like when the sugar glider was seen at Burke Road Billabong. It's really fulfilling and makes life worthwhile. There's my tips.
Mathew Dixon: Thanks very much, Graeme. So, look, the main takeaway message that I'm going to take from that is to encourage members of our community to get onto the Council website and have a look at the Backyard Biodiversity program and the other support around biodiversity, including friends groups.
And the last question is for Tania, who I've just unmuted. Tania, how can people in Boroondara - and I don't know if you know the answer to this - get some FOGO compost?
Tania Hall: How can they get FOGO compost? Can we have a conversation with the Council and look at a solution to get your hands on it? Probably the best option.
Mathew Dixon: Alright. OK, we'll take that question on notice, then. I didn't know that was going to be such a difficult question.
Alright, look, given it's nearly ten past seven, I just wanted to really thank all of our presenters, all of the participants that have come along to the workshop, the webinar tonight. A big thank you to our mayor, Cynthia Watson, for her very helpful introduction, and other councillors, and I've said participants already. So, thank you, everybody that's participated. We have taken note of all the feedback. And the big finishing point is please visit our Have Your Say page. Have your say, tell us what you think we should include in our Climate Action Plan. Whatever you think that is, let us know so we know how we can support our community.
With that, I think, unless there's any quick closing remarks, I'm going to say thank you very much and goodnight.
Dr Graeme Lorimer: Mat, I have a couple of things to raise from the questions. One of them was can the speakers' notes be made available? So, you might be able to say something about that. And somebody's asking how many people joined tonight? You can probably answer that easily.
Mathew Dixon: Look, I'm happy to answer. When I last checked, there was about 125. And we are going to make... For a limited time, for the rest of the consultation, we can make the video recording of this presentation available, so we can put that onto our website. I'm making an assumption that that has worked, but things have gone pretty well from a technology point of view tonight. We seem to have lost Rebecca, but the timing's not too bad on that. So, we will endeavour to share that material. So, thank you very much.