Australia celebrates composting week

International Composting Awareness Week 2007 (ICAW) is being celebrated across Australia between 6 and 12 May.

For the first time, the week is being sponsored by governments in four states and events are being managed centrally by Compost Australia.

"ICAW represents a unique opportunity to promote the invaluable environmental benefits of composting and compost use. Composting can reduce the extent of global warming by reducing carbon emissions and can significantly improve the water efficiency and soil quality of gardens and farms," said Angus Johnston, national projects manager at Compost Australia.

Developing markets for compost, a carbon rich resource, can prevent a significant amount of carbon dioxide emission each year due to the diversion of organic waste from landfill, as well as increasing the uptake of carbon dioxide by soils.

In NSW alone the processing and application of composts saved approximately half a million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2006. This equates to removing around 128,000 cars from the road.

This is the first year Composting Week has been celebrated so widely in Australia, and it is being jointly facilitated by the Centre for Organic & Resource Enterprises (CORE) and Compost Australia.

Chief Executive of CORE, Chris Rochfort, said: "Composting Awareness Week provides an excellent opportunity for the composting industry and our community to get involved in making an easy yet significant contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, water use and waste to landfill and, at the same time, share in the benefits of more beautiful gardens and green spaces around our city.

"Compost allows us to "˜close the loop' by returning our green waste to our natural environment. Composting Awareness Week is a great initiative and I recommend that the community contacts us to get involved with our event this year."