On the last day of term three, State Minister for the Environment and The Great Barrier Reef, Hon. Meaghan Scanlon, visited PBC for a tour of our Sustainability Shed and an overview of our sustainability program. A group of PBC students demonstrated the industrial composting machine that has been in operation here since the end of 2020. To date, we have processed more than two tonnes of food waste (2095.49kg) through the machine, generating over 200kg of compost that has been used by the school and the Southern Beaches Community Garden at Tugun. Of this, 1066.75kg of food waste has come from the school canteens, Trade Training Centre and Home Economics kitchens.

As a part of the composting program, PBC has also been collecting food scraps from the local community through a bin placed outside Gecko House on Thrower drive. Volunteers from the Southern Beaches Community Garden collect the bin and deliver it to school where the food waste is processed through our composter. As of 8th October, we have collected 1,028kg of food waste from the local community.

If you would like to compost your food waste but don’t have a compost bin at home, consider dropping your food scraps into the bin next to the shipping container outside Gecko House. Our machine can process all food waste, including items you wouldn’t normally place in a home compost bin, such as bread, dairy products, meat, fish and chicken (including bones) and citrus peel. The machine cannot process large animal bones, oyster or scallop shells or cooking oil. The composter has a capacity of 100kg of food waste per day, using heat and bacterial digestion to turn this into 10-20kg of compost within 24 hours. Our aim is to use the machine to divert all food waste, including student lunch scraps, away from landfill and instead use them to enrich the gardens around the school.

#redsgogreen

Tom Pasley, Sustainability