Green waste returns to earth

Our garden clippings, prunings, weeds and twigs are being transformed into compost at a new facility in Dandenong that will also take food waste from 1 July.

Everyone can help the process by recycling correctly. Grass clippings, leaves, weeds, prunings, twigs and small branches can all be recycled by putting them straight into the red lidded, green waste bin.

Decontamination of garden waste is a costly exercise involving manually sorting to remove items like plastic bags, pots, bricks, soil and glass.

After green, organic waste is de-contaminated, a screening process sends smaller pieces straight to composting while larger items like tree branches are shredded to reduce their size.

Two stages of composting then takes place over a few weeks, killing weeds, seeds and bacteria, producing a fine and coarse compost product for agriculture and farming use but also to keep open space green and healthy.

The fortnightly green waste collection is an optional service.

Register for fortnightly green waste collection

Red lids on garden waste bins will be replaced with lime green lids as part of the introduction of food waste recycling from 1 July. The new lids will include handy information on what can and can’t go in the bin.

Lime green lids are the Australian standard for garden and food waste.

Recycling our green, organic garden waste has many benefits for the environment including:

To see how Victorian farmers are putting green waste to work visit backtoearth.vic.gov.au