Ep 006 - We're Back and We've Joined the Compost Revolution Featuring David Gravina

Before we start today, Seedy Chat Chats would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of Nunawal and Ngambri country, the land on which we garden, our land's first gardeners and caretakers. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. Welcome to Seedy Chats, the podcast where imperfect gardeners Avril, that's me, and Bernadette, hi, that's me, chat about our favourite topics, gardening and life. So whether you're new to gardening, a seasoned pro or somewhere in between, join us on our journey to be mindful in gardening and life in general. Okay, hello our Seedy Chats listeners and welcome back Avril. Hello, welcome Bernadette. You've survived COVID. And Ireland? I have survived. I had a few firsts in Ireland, COVID and sea swimming. You've never swum in sea? Well, I have, but not in Ireland. Oh, lovely. When I was a child in Ireland and then it just becomes too cold. You just don't, especially at 12 degree, 12 degree water. Do you think that you got COVID because... You didn't have your hands in the soil as much. Oh, maybe. Yes, I know. Because we didn't we did talk about that before I went away. Like how we were covered. This is a term that's kind of getting me a covered virgin. And I'm not anymore. But you're doing OK now. Oh, yeah, fine. I had no symptoms. I only tested because I was with my I was living with my mum and dad. And I just felt that I needed I need like I had spent the day with my. my Auntie Mary and she came down with some symptoms and she tested herself and she was taking us out like flies. I'd say when the angels were checking the list they went, we'll give it to Avril, oh that's Saint Avril, we won't give her any symptoms. Yeah it was amazing, maybe a bit of sinus because that is one of my ailments when I do get sick, sinus, but other than that like I would be right there spreading the love. Honey Bee beeswax candles for the silence. That's right, yes. I'm a big fan of my honey beeswax candles. But yes, Ireland was great. It was a lovely journey over. It's a long journey with a seven year old. Yep. So Ava came with me. Great traveling companion though. Even with the Finnergan. I didn't give her any. No, I had a bad experience with Finnergan once with Callan when he was just one and my doctor had... told me, you know, try it before you go. Because you never know. Well, I didn't try it before I left. And whatever percentage makes your child hyper, that was me on an aeroplane with Callan. So he went the opposite way. He didn't make him sleepy, it made him hyper. Never again. No, Ava was a great traveling comp- And it was fantastic. But I miss chatting, Bernadette. I miss chatting too. I miss chatting too. And did you have any funny stories when you were there? Did I have funny stories when I was there? I had a lot of memories, because obviously I caught up with a lot of, obviously my family, but friends as well. And it brought back a memory of one of my friends that she, we used to work in a pharmacy. And she would, we used to, it was when you would bring in your film, your camera film roles to get them developed. Remember that? Yeah. Wow. And you'd be like, oh my gosh, what do the photos look like? Yeah, exactly. You get negatives and everything. Like anyway, we used to have specials on every so often. So people would bring in and we'd write down their details. And every time we'd offer an extra set for 99 cent. But when he said that really, really quickly, it used to sound like extra sex for 99 cents. And so this used to be like a running joke. That's a good price for extra sex. Don't I know it? We were wrecked. So, yeah, so that was one of the stories that that came up. And working in the pharmacy, we used to have this whole fragrance wall as well. all the fragrances you could think of and people around Christmas time it was booming like yeah. I can't describe what it used to be like working in this pharmacy. We used to be like knee, like just would be unbelievable. People were waiting like three rows back. Just for the 99 cents. Yeah, maybe. Just to get served. I don't know why. I don't know retail. like that anymore. Yeah, yeah. Like maybe it's because it's diluted out and we open extra hours or people are shopping online. I don't know, but this was manic, like when we worked in this pharmacy and we'd done loads of reminiscing when I was at home. But another thing was when people used to come in and they would want to smell all these fragrances, they'd do your fucking head in as well. They'd be like, no, I don't like that. No, I'll try that one. I'll try that one. You'd be there for hours going. And then they'd be like, thank you, bye. And be like, what? Come back. You always know it's a bad sign when like a 17 year old comes in in their school uniform and they're like, can I smell this? You're like, yeah. But they're all customers. I'd like to start with Britney Spears' face. J-Lo, glow please. Anyway, another thing that we used to say is, look, come back when you've got nothing on but we would mean. no other fragrance on but when we would just say it to someone and we didn't realize what we were saying until we were like come back with nothing on and someone pointed out to it like no for no other fragrance on and then you'll smell a lot better. And then some Karen was like do you realize what you're saying? Yes come back with nothing on what do you mean nothing on? We've got a 99 cents special and we need some help with it. Yeah, so they're probably there. That was I had a good laugh at home with that. And then when I'm in sea swimming as well, I look to my friend. Are you nudie rudie? No, no. Actually, the day I went sea swimming with one of my beautiful friends, I wasn't going to go in. I was like, I'll just be your moral support. But then her swimming buddy wasn't going. And I thought, I can't go in on her own. So there I am in my local car park. And actually, like these little towns, people take it for granted over there, right? I mean, we've got beautiful coastline here. But in Ireland, like these are this beach. This is Viking country, right? And one of the close little towns to this beach is called Anagasin. And it used to be the capital, the Viking capital of Ireland. So spectacular coastline, like just beautiful. So the beach that I swam on was called Clarehead Beach. And I'm in the car park and I said to my friend, I went, I don't have swimwear, but I'll go in with you. So I was stripping down to my underwear and no one's batting an eyelid because sea swimming. Did you have a matching bra? I know. No, I didn't. But I had a little shoestring top, right? Oh, OK. So it kind of looked like a swimwear. And I said to my. Luckily for me, I wear a suck me in singlet. That's a constant wetsuit. So I'd be ready for swimming. But yeah, so what have you been up to, Brenda, since I've been away? Come on. We went to New Zealand. Oh, you did. Yes. Oh, no, that's something back. You've been. I don't know. I don't know. What have I been up to? Gardening. Gardening, transplanting little seedlings, starting basil that never came through to fruition. So it's just been too cold. Like it's still a little bit deceiving this time of year. We had snow here a week ago and it's two weeks from. summer so it's a really weird spring isn't it so that's been a bit tricky. What about the community garden? Have you been up there much? I've been up there a little bit. It's actually really pumping. People have been doing a lot of work clearing out plots and everything's growing like crazy. It looks really good. Only three days ago I did some zucchini, some winter squash, some nugget pumpkins which I love which if you've never grown they grow to sort of about a half a meter bush with these tiny little Are they little... Are they your award-winning pumpkins? They are. They did get me first at the watercolour show. They mustn't have been many entrants. I'm only joking. They did look very cute. I don't think they were that cute. So we've got a super exciting episode today. We spoke with David Gravina from the Compost Revolution. And we've tied this in within our local community in Gurrgong. Our council is rolling out at the moment. And I've got to do a big shout out to two friends of mine, Pam and Bri, because they're the ones that drew my attention in one of our mother's groups, wine chats. When they were talking about composting and they didn't really understand what could happen in our local community, et cetera, et cetera. And when we looked it up, because when I lived in Melbourne, they had the FOGO program, which is food organics, green organics. which is basically when you put your kitchen scraps in a bin and you put those in the green bin that gets emptied every fortnight by council. And I mentioned to them that I'd been putting all, I said, oh, you shouldn't be wasting your scraps. I put all my scraps in my little compost out the back. And they said, you're not supposed to put those in the green bin. Anyway, turns out they were correct. And since then, we've been looking into it. We contacted council and they've come back and said, FOGO is rolling out in Gugong, hopefully before Christmas. So we wanted to take the opportunity to explain to all of our listeners, not just in our local community. Well, it's all the surrounding community. So it's in Bunga Door, Jerebumbra, Captain's Flat, Kowoola. I'm actually not too sure if they're gonna roll it out to where I live in rural Gugong. But it's to make people aware that FOGO is happening and what we can and can't do with it. And while people are thinking about composting, we wanted to start the conversation of there's FOGO, which is a great initiative by the council, but also what the compost revolution referred to as HOGO, which is the home version of composting. And certainly in terms of carbon footprint and sustainability, one of the best things you can do is compost at home. improve your garden and your soil at home. There's many benefits to that that David talks about. But just quickly, we wanted to let people know firstly, what should they expect with FOGO coming to their doors? So you will get a little kitchen caddy, which is like a miniature, miniature wheelie bin, maybe 30 centimetres high drop to your door. And it will come with six months worth of liners that go in that compost bin. And essentially you can place all of your food waste in that bin. And when the bin is full, you tie up the liner and you throw that in your green bin, which gets emptied fortnightly. You don't have to use the liners, but if you like it to be a bit tighter and cleaner, you can. The liners break down. They're fully biodegradable. You can also make your own liner out of newspaper. So if you have newspaper, I do that a lot. And I don't, you can actually go on and get how to make a perfect liner, like an envelope. and it fits perfectly in, I just get my paper and I just shove it in there. And for me, as long as the bottom is covered where all the juice is going to be, that's the important thing. I actually use, I use Who Gives a Crap toilet paper and that comes in a piece of paper. And I use the piece of paper from that to line line. I've just been to your loo, you have a bit of paper in there, are you saving that for your kitchen? I say that's what I folded it for. I was nearly taking it out with me to leave it in the kitchen. So what can you put in that scrap caddy? You can put all your fruits and vegetables, meat, cheese, seafood, bones, eggs, bread, pasta, rice, cereal, tea leaves, coffee grounds, leftover foods. Obviously if you're using something stinky like leftover seafood, you might be better off leaving that in the freezer or something and popping that out on bin day rather than... That's a great idea actually. Yeah, yeah. Rather than if you're worried. What can't go in the bin? Plastic. of any kind including plastic bags, polystyrene, nappies, wipes, pet poo, kitty litter, paper towels, which was interesting to me, cardboard or any building waste. Oh no paper towels. I wonder if there's such a variation with paper towels that some are acceptable in summer and they can't really monitor it I'm not sure. Yeah right because I use all my paper towels in my own. See this is another thing where home organic is great if you have like a little compost I put paper towel in my compost at home too. I put all that in my worm farm as well and it's great. So you're probably right, there's probably quite a different variant so they can't say... They can't place it. And cardboard as well because I thought that would be part of the... Again people might put cardboard with like plastic tape on it. Yeah, tape. And so then they'd... You see, well it's little things like that that basically... We've got to start somewhere so it's probably going to make people aware. as to why they can't put that in there. Let's take the tape off and you can still put it in your own. You can put your cardboard in your own home worm farm and in your own compost bin as well. Absolutely, I used cardboard to line on my garden beds when I built them as well. So if you're not an at-home gardener, but you wanna do something, there's an awful lot of carbon emissions and everything like that created with waste. but you wanna do something. FOGO is a great program for you where you can put all of your organic waste into the green bin and there's something happening with them instead of them getting stuck in landfill. But then also as Dave and Avril, I will talk about in the segment coming up, there's the, if you are a home gardener, there's also the home composting, whether that might be a compost bin, a worm farm. Yeah, I mean, I use a lot of things on my plants inside. So the worm we are my plants. And I just recently from another podcast as well that we will be releasing soon, the potash, like anything from my fire, I then use the ashes. Yeah, the ashes. Full of potassium. Full of potassium for my indoor plants as well. So I just kind of popped some of that around yesterday. Oh God, I've just got visions of me doing that in Charlotte like painting. ash all over my walls. But then I watered them. I watered it in, right? So it kind of... Or you could make a tea? You could make your own tea with the ash too. So even if you're not gardening, what I'm trying to say is if you have indoor plants, and I used to have indoor plants until we had bushfires and I need, couldn't get my hands on an air purifier because they were sold out everywhere. And then the next best thing was indoor plants. So off I went and now we're all planted up. So we hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed interviewing it. David was a wealth of knowledge. He's been at this for a long time and we really enjoyed. He's a pleasure to listen to. I hope you really enjoy him. Um, yeah, so I'm David Gravina. I'm the founder and chief composting officer of I love that. Yeah, I get, I sometimes get laughs and say it's obviously a made up title. Yeah. You get to do that when you're the founder and we're, we're, we're a, a, a home and community composting program. And we work with local councils, uh, predominantly as well as some larger, um, partners like Stockland to engage and inspire and equip households to compost their food scraps, nurture their gardens and then grow their own food for both the green, healthier, more resilient lifestyles and communities. So our mission really is to normalize and turn this behavior into an everyday behavior that all Australians can. engage with because we're going to have to do that anyway. We have to move to more sustainable lifestyles. This is going to be forced on us by climate change. But equally, it's actually a wonderful and beneficial thing to do, even if you didn't have to do it. So we're trying to let everyone know that that's actually something you should get into now. Learn how to grow food and get all that benefit from engaging with nature in your garden and also participating in that. cycle of life that, you know, nature does, but we tend to forget in the big cities, which is that, you know, everything gets reused. There's no such thing as waste. Only things in the wrong place, as Charlie McGee from the formidable vegetable sound system likes to sing. Yeah. And it is one of those things that once the penny drops and you do start composting that you can't believe you, and you start that sort of a lifestyle, you can't believe you didn't do it before, isn't it? Like when you Yeah, yeah, totally. It feels very wrong to put food into the into the rubbish bin or the red bin. Once you've started to see the value of it and see how it how it promotes growth in your own garden and feeling that connection, you know, with that process and you realize that the more you give your garden, I would like to say give your garden some love, the more love you give your garden, the more it gives back to you. And so you want to capture all that incredible feed it into your garden and put it back to the soil. That's right. I think on your website it says, compost grow, eat repeat. And it kind of just, you know, you could have it on a t-shirt and it just, people can relate to it when you start to do it. It makes sense. I've been gardening for a few years, but the Compost Revolution website was the first place for me where I found tutorials and brochures and information where I clicked on the one website and... And it's all free. It actually blew my mind where I just clicked on there and I thought, oh, but that's not gonna work for me because I've got a tumbler compost bin. And then the next one was like, if you've got a tumbler compost bin, and it's just this amazing resource library for anyone out there. If you wanna keep a worm farm, if you wanna start composting and there's all different types of composting you can look into, there's literally step-by-step instructions. And then also, you can even interact and ask questions and things like that, can't you? Yeah, yeah, and we've designed this and we've been working with councils and under some EPA grant funding from the government, which has helped us to provide these resources for free for over 10 years. So yeah, we were the first online platform really to take what seems quite quaint now, but when we did this program in... 2012, we took it online, I should say, it was already a council run face to face workshop program called the compost revolution. And they, this is Waverley, Randwick and Wallara councils in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. And they had already experimented with how big could they make this traditional face to face workshop program and you hit a limit of number of people you can get in a physical space, how many Saturdays you've got, how day of their weekend or more to learn the basics of worm farming or composting. And, and so they came to us, I was running an agency at the time and purpose driven agency and we specialised in this kind of thing. And there was this kind of question, will people be able to learn without smelling and touching the soil? And it was, it feels quite quaint now in, you know, 2022 that you'd question being able to learn online via video and. and imagery and tutorials such as we've got. And of course you can, but at the time it hadn't really been done yet. So I guess that's always someone has to be the first to try it and we tried it and it was incredibly successful. But a very, very high, we did a survey about 12 months after the first pilot and we had like 93% of people had gone through the program and were still composting a year later. So it works. So it was like, okay, well, that works. I mean, now it feels quaint to need to ask the question, but we sort of trialled it as a pilot. And anyway, fast forward 10 years, yeah, we've got a lot of options on the website for a very, very important reason. It's very intentional to provide people with a variety of options, because while it's quite simple in principle, you want to capture your food scraps, get them into your garden, but... people have different constraints, whether they've got a garden, whether they're in an apartment, whether they've got the time to nurture a worm farm, which is like having a couple of thousand pets. You've got to keep, you know, they've got to be on your mind a couple of times a week, not too much, but you do have to- My work's eat better than I do. Yeah. And you tend to become very passionate about making sure that you're a guardian to a whole community there, a whole little ecosystem. So you do learn to love that. But for some people with busy lives, they may not- be up for that. So you need systems that solve that problem. The tumblers are great when you don't have any garden earth to put a traditional compost bin on. They cost a bit more, but they solve that problem. You know, and there's a multitude of different sized units for different scale of food waste, depending on your family size and how much food waste you create based on your diet, whether you're a vegetarian, and and so on and so on. So there's there's choice and know that can be daunting. So our job and thing I think we do really well is just guide people through that, through a number of different methods on our site to get you to the right choice. And we do surveys every year on the people that join our program. So we know that the single biggest cider of success is the choice of your system matching your lifestyle and needs. So we get you over the line and you won't get that at Bunnings. You know if you go into Bunnings you can buy a worm farm but there's no one there to ask a question of and they probably wouldn't know. they wouldn't know to ask you the sort of questions that we ask you. And we have like AI powered chatbots that do that as well as human. So we're quite a sophisticated as well as just really good information content. So people get the system and then they learn how to use the system with our tutorials and they're, you know, carefully crafted with experts and e-learning experts as well. So we've got a very high quality, uh, kind of introductory with a little bit of extra. medium experience people content, how to's and then heaps of help articles so that when you get that next level problem, I believe you're going to share one or two of those. I might have to ask the AI chat box when you do. Or get on our help system and check. Obviously, over 10 years, a lot of questions have been asked. So we, our team put those into the help system. So there's lots and lots of answers. That's fantastic. I'm hoping you can. I'm sick of. We're gonna get talking about it. Can we take one step back? Can we take one step back? Why should, if you're not composting and you don't have a garden, why should you compost? And you're not into gardening, but why should you compost? Well, you know, I asked this question at the conference today, does anyone here garden? Quite a few people do do gardening in some form, whether it's their own garden or not. But even if you don't have a garden, most people are looking after indoor plants or have a balcony with a decent amount of plants. And plants are good for you in any of those situations. You should have plants in your bedroom to filter the air. And we know that greenery around us is critical for wellbeing. So you want house plants even if you don't have a garden. And a worm farm, it would... So we've got a very good looking worm farm. We say it's so good looking you can invite it into your home. It's the only worm farm you'd invite into the house. And so you can have that in the laundry if you don't even have a balcony or on the balcony if you do. And take the worm we from that, the liquid that comes out of that. And feed that back into your house plants. So that's one reason right there. Then of course, there's the bigger picture environmental reason to avoid food waste in the first place. And that's a that's a massive one. Food waste represents around five percent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. That's food waste sitting in landfills producing methane. So we don't want that to happen. And just through the compost revolution program on your website. I read that you've diverted over 25,000 tonnes of waste from landfill. We're up to 27. Wow. Yeah, that may have been an old stat. That was July 1st. Yes. Yeah, that's right. You caught me, David. No, you caught me. You haven't updated that page. It's going so fast and we're adding so many people that the numbers quickly get out of date. And I think with that, there was a number as well as to how much money. Is it that you've saved? Which save councils $1.5 million in waste management. That was huge. I loved reading that. That was great. Because typically these programs are seen as a cost for government and that represents a challenge when you think about free waste. And obviously they're coming around now to investing in better solutions for waste, accepting that will. cost government money, but in the end, it costs us money because it comes out of your rates or out of your taxes. But the beauty of this program is, you know, it's actually a relatively low cost piece of equipment that we're putting into homes. We have a model where the council subsidize it. So it's really good price, like really good. You know, often half price plus free delivery from retail and often even higher, some councils 60, 70, even 80% off retail. And I was at a festival the other day and the council was for people that went to the festival got a system for $15. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, they're good provinces. That's key obviously in current economic climate. But that's a starting point. So council's chipping in something but the householders who are purchasing those systems are also putting some money down. So in terms of leveraging council spend, there's a, you know, from a pure return on investment. yada yada, you know, type thing. It's, it's about $1.62 of, you know, public money, as in the residents money for every dollar that the council is investing. So that's for a program like this means very powerful. Yeah, and also, or once you've got the system, the people the waste, the waste management becomes an activity, effectively a volunteer activity by that person, not someone that the council has to pay, you know, trucks, not trucks moving around very expensive. Petrol. Petrol being consumed. Yes. The greenhouse gases related to that and all of the other costs. So it's a very cost effective program and it gets cheaper over the time. As long as we keep people on the program, it gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper for council over time because these systems last for decades. And I've seen the dirt vader, which is our... compost bin that looks a bit like Darth Vader's helmet. It's like, you know, it, I've seen that particular model, you know, in the backyards of my home, hometown in Melbourne, you know, they must be 30, 40 years old. They're kind of gone all gray from the sun and they're in, you know, in the backyards along the river Creek that I've walked, I walk when I go home. So these systems last a long time and they just keep on diverting waste for free. And Even, you know, I was just saying earlier, we've got the FOGO system coming to us, which is the food and organic waste, which is where our local council will be letting you put your scraps into the green bin here. But even better than that, and this is what's always blown my mind about composting in general, is that everyone will send away all their green clippings and everything like that in the green bin, send it to a plant to be processed, and then bring it back in the spring to their house to compost their garden. When you could be doing all of that at home, yourself without all of that carbon footprint. That's right. Yeah, I mean, it's just in terms of circular economy, that idea, it's that you can't get more circular and more sustainable than dealing with that waste in your home. Plus, when you deal with your own waste, when you when you're the one that's taking that kitchen caddy down to the garden, you sort of you tend to waste less because you sort of see the volume. You're aware. You're aware of it. Yeah. sort of as a circuit breaker on that throwaway society kind of vibe that we've all sort of become accustomed to put it in your rubbish bin, it's done. Whereas you start seeing that pile up in the kitchen caddies which we sell which are a lot smaller than a regular bin they sit on your benchtop and then you understand yeah look I don't maybe I shouldn't be wasting all this you know and so that first moment of scraping the food off the plate there's a hesitation that well is this all throwaway? Now can this be reheated? Can this be re- put into a container for tomorrow. And that's a good, really another benefit of doing this. You just get into that mindset of not wasting in the first place, which is a big part of what we need to, how we need to change as a society. Yeah, for me, I've just been, I was talking about this earlier, I've just been back in Ireland and I'm talking to my friends and I'm like, anyone got a worm farm? No. Anyone composting? No. And I was like, anyone want to set up a worm farm? I'll go and I'll buy it and I'll set it up and they're like, don't you dare. And I'm like, I just can't get my head around this. I'm it's the only, it's the only pit my husband's let in the house. Your worms. Have you brought your worms in? Oh, well they're on the alfresco. They're kind of in the house. Fair enough. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's, it is just a whole kind of movement and mindset. And the more I talked about it, then a few of my friends are like, Maybe we, I go out and maybe show us what this worm farm looks like. Cause they were thinking rodents and we couldn't do that. Like we don't have enough space. And I was like, you've got a garden. What are you talking about? So my worm farm is from the compost revolution website. It's the three layered with the little wooden legs. It is, it is a very sexy little setup. It's a lovely looking modern thing. Yeah. It's called the farm. Yeah. The farm. Yes. Yes, the farm. And yeah, my little worms live in there, but I think I'm getting lots of castings, but I'm not getting worm tea. Oh, interesting. But Aval did mention to me today that maybe it's dry. Yeah, that's generally the reason. If you're not getting a liquid at the bottom. So I would suggest you can actually just put a little bit of water down just to kick it off. Like sometimes it might be it's... whatever moisture is there is pocketing around the edges and not getting into the center and falling through because it's a gravity fed system. So it just falls through the different layers. So don't feel, you don't want to drown your worms. You don't put like liters and liters, but you could put half a liter of water in just to start the flow and yeah, think about your food mix. And so one of the mistakes a lot of beginner worm farmers make is too much wet, too much food and actually get sludgy. So you might have the other opposite problem where you don't have enough moist food going in. Are you meant to shred up newspaper or provide some of a balance between the food and that nitrogen input? But it sounds like you might be out of balance the other way. Yeah, I think because I shut up my Woolies recyclable bags and I was putting them on dry and I never even recommended that. I could even put them in water, moisten them down a little bit and that might add a little bit of moisture for you. It's all about balance. Yeah. And the output is telling you something. So it sounds like they're good suggestions, just anything. I use a bit, I use a sprayer as well. So I'll spray as opposed to adding a lot. Like if you're a little bit nervous or unsure, I just spray it. Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit of moisture or, you know, um, getting summers here, get some watermelons, they always, that's right. Yes. I've always got the, on the bottom, I don't have the tap. I've got the little tube, the clear tube. Yes. So it's permanently, I guess, open. Should the tube always be in or should it be closed off or that makes no difference? No, that's fine. It's a tube is just a way you can create a continuous flow if you want to fall into a larger container that's lower than the farm. Yes. It's an optional extra but yeah that won't be causing any problems. Yeah, it just sounds like you just need to get some more moisture in there. Give him a drink. Yeah, but take the... take the layers off and have a little poke around. And if it feels really, you know, like it's dry, it should be somewhat moist in there. And then it depends what you're feeding it. You know, what sort of food do you eat generally and what sort of food scraps are going in? Yeah, I'm pretty selective because I was, I did read about getting them too wet. So maybe I've over-corrected there. Yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah. And if you've got, how long have you had it going? How long you reckon, Avril? Do you know what she's been talking about for about a year, I would say. No, it's like five months. It feels like a year. Okay, yeah, you should be getting a good amount of liquid by now. So you should also have quite a few worms by now. So you maybe crank up the volume of food as well. I think my worms have decreased. Maybe they're drying. Maybe not feeding. They will adjust to the food volume. So far so- They're quite skinny, is that? Yeah, feed them a bit more. Feed them up, brother. Don't sort of double it overnight, but just start ramping up. Yeah. I've created an anorexic worm. Feed them up, feed them up. And do you do any work with schools at all? Yeah, we have a program where we support schools that cause gaps for schools, where we provide a- kind of a fundraising layer to the program. So we give 10% of all sales to that school if they can spread the word. And we have plenty of schools purchasing through their council. Yeah, councils are very keen for schools to get on and it's obviously a fantastic place to start, you know. And so there's, yeah, there's plenty of schools on the program. That's awesome. Because we've got a new school, public school opening near us. And I was thinking that I was like, it's a bit of a Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm we've we community garden together and I was like, well, we could even help them out and go in and make sure that they're running properly for them and just to make sure that, yeah, that the flow would. Yeah, don't tell in, but because my worms haven't been making tea, I did pinch a bit from the community garden because they are cracking off. Are they? Yeah, right. Are they? I'm glad you brought up community because that's a big part of it as well. So there is the sort of the individual side of it, you know, working on your home and your garden, but also composting is about community. And we are we talk about that. We're a home organics, community organics program. So we're as much about. trying to get people to engage in community gardening, whether that be at school or on the verge, in street gardening or in special plots. We need to adapt and engage with that. And of course that builds community resilience. It builds bonds, it creates interesting relationships that wouldn't have formed otherwise and has another whole layer of benefits outside of. And for me, we talk about like self-sufficiency and I always think you can never really be self, it should really be community sufficient. Yeah, I think the term we should try and move to community sufficient because it's a passion of mine. Yeah, definitely. Totally, yeah. That's absolutely how you become resilient to disasters, climate change, everything, and just how you live a better, happier life is you build relationships up, don't you? So yeah, more of that. Yeah, and I mean, the bigger picture even, I suppose we talk a lot about because we're outside gardening a lot with mental health. And the community garden during COVID was amazing because we were able to go in garden. Go somewhere. And talk about our worms and have that interest. Yeah, so yeah. I'm glad you put that up too because you're hitting all my talking points usually, but I love it because this bit about mental health is another passion of mine and our team. Read this amazing book that your listeners might be interested in called The Well-Garden Mind. by Sue Stuart Smith and she's an English psychologist. Oh, I just bought this. Yeah, anyway, if you're interested in this aspect of gardening, it's incredible because she goes through all of the great examples of her in her work and also through the research is quite well researched. So all this research backed evidence that she brings to the book about how gardening. improves wellbeing and adds a couple of years to your life. For instance, if people that garden in later life live longer, it's of course, you know, we know just from personal experience, you feel great after you've been in the garden for half an hour. She talks about the mental state you get in. It's like this sort of flow state and this meditative state. And it's really lovely way she talks about the nature of gardening is that you are kind of... in control and not in control. It's this kind of dance you have with nature where do things you influence but really at the end of the day nature is also pushing back and that's a fantastic thing to remember when you're dealing with people with PSTD have gone through horrible experiences. They can see you know you see death in the garden things you grow up you plant die and then you see that but then all of a sudden something grows out of that same spot that you didn't and then you realise there's a cycle of life and things that happen in life are not necessarily an end state and all sorts of well-being benefits for people that are struggling with difficult times. Also, when you take up gardening, even if you're a beginner, it's sort of a different form of, it's kind of there's an artistry to it, but you don't have to be an expert to get success. Whereas, you know, if you're a... you're starting off and you're going to become a painter on a canvas. Or if you're learning how to ski. Yeah, yeah, anything you can think about. You know, pottery, whatever, you know, the first time is, yeah, it can be quite demoralizing and it can take a while to get success, whereas in the garden, you know, even beginners achieve something straight away. That's wonderful. And so there's a lovely layer to it that it gets, it's really welcoming to beginners, but you know, but at the same time, you never master it. You can be doing it for 30 years learning new things and so for the expert it's just forever fascinating you're always a you're always a learner in gardening so it's got this lovely kind of multi-layered benefits to the human mind and body as well physical benefits so yeah anyway love the book I recommend it. That's a great recommendation thank you. And you said you're in Melbourne do you have a little garden? I grew up in Melbourne I'm now based in Sydney but I grew up with migrant parents, so we had the classic, you know, quarter acre block with a big veggie garden and lots of produce that came out of that to feed four children. And so working class celery. So I kind of experienced it as a kid. Sort of that way. Yeah. We have a question that we ask all our guests on Seedy Chats, and it's my first gardening memory. So that's probably a good. Do you have a first gardening memory? Would that be one of your? Yeah, yeah, as a child watching my dad, mainly just tending that veggie patch and just pulling fresh produce, tomatoes. So took it for granted probably after a little while, but you just, that was, our salads were, I was wondering how they tasted so good. And it was because it was all fresh from the- That's right. organic and it's fresh from the garden. It's just been plucked. It's not coming from a supermarket. It's not been trucked and refrigerated for two weeks, grown to a certain size and all the rest of it is literally, you know, that taste that you can't replicate any other way. So I think that, you know, just being around that and I guess we were we were lucky in that way. Yeah, we we we have we had another podcast that we had and that we talked about that how strawberries are always so much sweeter when they're grown at home. And because now with the supermarkets, they're picked so much earlier that they're quite sturdy for traveling. So they're not actually ripe when you're getting them. And that's just how it happens. We're not saying that that's a bad thing, but how everything tastes so different. Yeah, I think it's bad that we've compromised so much. We have. I will accept. Yeah, yeah, and we've compromised for that scale. And, and, you know, I think it is a bad thing actually, because, you know, those kind of, that kind of produce is part of a industrial food complex. It is. And it's also large corporations. I mean, Woolies and Coles are dominating the supermarket sector here, almost like nowhere else in the world, and forcing very specific outcomes that benefit the shareholders and not the... not the planet or necessarily the end consumer. No, yeah, you're right. Yeah. I'm always very nervous because most like I know all my friends, like that's where they purchase all their, you know, my friends are already thinking crazy. And I'm always like, you know, pussy floating around going, no, but that's okay. But that's not, but it is, but it's not, you know, trying not to offend anyone, but at the same time going, we can do this so much better. It's, it's not good enough. And we can definitely do this so much better. And we're gonna have to, I mean, we have to diversify our food sources once climate impacts really kick in. We can't have food coming from single source locations because of extreme weather events. Even during COVID, we started to see some of that food security conversation happening in our survey. It was interesting that around that time, we had a huge uptake in home composting and... and gardening during the pandemic for sort of obvious reasons. Everyone was home creating significant amounts of food waste and they were at home looking at their gardens and decided to make a leap and improve their gardens, which was a fantastic silver lining to a very dark cloud. But yeah, we think that that also triggered a lot of people to think about food security because we had that concern about... the runs on the supermarkets and realizing that, oh, there's only a couple of days of food actually at the supermarket at any one time. And if there's a disruption in the supply chain, that food will run out. Not just the toilet paper. The food could run out. And a lot of people started thinking about food security and joined our program with that in mind. It wasn't the only reason and certainly maybe not the most significant factor, but hit the radar that people are worried about having that food security. And that brings us to sort of the next thing, which is all about growing and creating abundant gardens that actually can grow a significant amount of our own food. It's kind of next level gardening where you say, how much food can I grow on a quarter acre block or in a small space balcony or smaller amount of land? A lot more than you think. Yeah. If you layer it, the food forest. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. valuable for that purpose because you get all year round growing and you get protected from the extreme weather events, which is something we're seeing more of, obviously with just the rains in particular at the moment. It's good to be able to protect your veggies patch from overwatering from nature. And so yeah, you know, growing your own food and then obviously that community gardening can also scale up to a significant amount. And that's where, you know, I got inspired many years ago by, I was doing a project, I was actually doing a project on peak oil, which has gone off the boil, so to speak, as an issue, but there was a concern for a while around whether we'd hit peak oil, which is, you know, we'd run out of oil world. And so it was really interesting. I did some research on Cuba and the oil crisis there and how they moved to an organic community-led food system, which they still have today, whereas the most productive food farms, quite large scale now, but the most productive food farms, co-ops in Cuba, and they're all organic, and they've remained so because of that. They didn't have oil in the 70s because they had the embargo, the US embargo on oil. So they had to come up with new ways. So that actually Australia's fathers of permaculture went across David Holmgren was one of them and he's still practicing today. And they went across and took permaculture principles to Cuba and that began that process of those methods, those working with nature basically is very Shook's way of describing permaculture. And so they garden organically there. And that idea of co-op, that cooperatively owned is very important. It's not just organic, it's not like... big corporations doing pesticide-free gardening. It's actually people who have a share in the farm and the produce grow it and benefit from that. Absolutely, I mean, as a beginner, that's a great place to come in and learn from people around you who are gardening in a co-op, but also, like we were talking about, not necessarily being 100% sustainable for yourself. person in the plot next to you might be doing all the garlic and you might be doing all the lettuce and you swap and... Yeah, you can specialise in a way. But you can specialise and collectively have all the... So then you can get some expertise in that one area. You wouldn't do one... Obviously you want to have multiple crops yourself, but not too many. So you're not trying to grow everything. But you get... And you can do companion cropping where they complement each other and keep the pests down and you're rotating for the soil over the season. and all that stuff. You do that but you don't have to grow everything yourself. That's right. And then you get good at one thing and you also get a bit of scale so you can really produce some volume and then yeah, trade it for some honey from the people. Yeah, we're up for some garlic trading, aren't we, Brendan? No? Yeah, well we'll be like, what have you got? Yeah. Show us what you got. I think we've probably got 200 heads of garlic this year. Yeah. It grows very well here, cold climate. Yeah. It's set and forget, put it in the garden over winter. Yeah, it's absolutely important to think about local, your local climate, because we're all in different climates. Where are you? Just outside of Canberra. Yeah, so technically New South Wales. I'm in Bondi, it's very different. Yes, yes. Yeah. Oh, but by the way, I just looked it up. The movie that people are interested about Cuba is called The Power of Community. How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. That's a documentary film. Awesome. I'm sure it's available somewhere on the internet. Well, check it out. I'd love to go to Cuba. And have you found in your, yeah, should we, we'll have to book a business trip, business trip to Cuba. Have you found in your research, I assume, I could be wrong, is the biggest deterrent to people composting the smell dealing with waste? I think the biggest deterrent is the fear of some of these types of things. You know, the rats come up with fear. There's always a bunch of reasons not to do something and those reasons, you know, have been trotted out. quite a bit in various places. So people can find those issues concerning. It's important to respect that there's a valid concerns and we need to talk about them. So we do on our side quite a bit. Smell is an indication that the compost or worm farm isn't being operated correctly or. at optimum levels of balance. So smell is the byproduct of an out of balance system, a bad smell anyway. I mean, if you go into a forest, it doesn't smell bad. It smells of a forest with the composting process happening in the lowest levels. And that's really what you want your compost bin to be smelling like most of the time is that it feels like nature's doing its thing. So that smell shouldn't be... uh yeah uncomfortable or or bad um and then you know the rat one again is is the product of bad smelling or or food not being properly turned into the compost or your exposed food or too much meat or uh too much food at once so that it's rotting and it's not uh composting at the right you know pace these things are what attract rodents uh mostly unless you happen to already have an infestation and they're there anyway and they're just wandering around and then then yeah, they can be a challenge. But we do have some systems that are rodent resistant. Yeah, off the ground. Mine's off the ground because it's a pretty rodent-pantz area. Yeah, rats can get into those too. I mean, if you've got rats, like if you're in a city area with, you know, you have them already, we have one system that is buried underground and that helps a lot, the green cone, which can work very well for that because it's sealed, the composting process is sort of underground and it's got no, it's got a cylinder, it's no, there's no sort of purchase points and you can add a bit of wire mesh around it when you install it into the ground just to make it a little bit harder for them and that's generally how you do it. So there are ways to deal with it if you're in that area prone to those problems. Is that system on your website? Yeah, it's called a ring. I've got a couple of them out the back, I'll show you. Do you? Yeah. underground ones? They're the easiest ones that I do because you literally just put the scraps in and then you never think about it again. You don't have to do anything in advert tumble. You don't have to worry about your levels or anything like that. It's just yeah. Yeah, right. Maintainance is great we say. And it's high volume, it digests between two and four litres of food a day at full capacity. It needs sunlight and well draining soil. But once you've got those two things, they work at full capacity, really effective. And you can throw more into it like when a farmer says touched on before, you know, you do choose what you give them. They don't lie. We shouldn't, you shouldn't really be putting fish and citrus and dairy into a fruit, into a worm farm or hardly any. Little bit's fine, you know, of anything, but not much. Whereas with the green cone, it's just throw it in. And if anyone that thinks, I don't know if I can compost or figure it out. I mean, at the end of the day, if you throw a bunch of organic waste at a pile, eventually, as they say, And if, you know, you might, you'll, everything's a learning process. You might have to tweak and things on the way, but it's nowhere near as intimidating as people think. And I mean, it's just a matter of starting. I think it's just a matter of starting, just starting somewhere. It's really, I mean, composting, say a traditional compost bin in your garden, like Al Jatt VEDA, it's literally, you put the food in, you make sure you mix it with, you know, some garden, leaves and or newspapers, usually and. It's a bit of, yeah, about equal amounts. Put your food in two or three times a week, it's fine, and you stir it with the aerator like the revolver that we make here in Melbourne or make down in Melbourne, which is a nice little ergonomic aerator that we created. And then you just stir that in to give it, because you need air, key part of composting. or any life activity. One of the smell comes largely from anaerobic activity. So aerating is a big part of it. So balanced mix of inputs and bit of air, that's it. So it's like, you don't even think about it when you're doing it. It's like, once you've done it a few times, you know, and it's just being consistent and putting it in aerating. And eventually you get to the point where if your husband throws a banana peel in the regular rubbish bin, you... Well, you hit him over the head with the aerator. Yeah. Because you see this liquid gold, the biggest single improvement to my gardening has been when I started focusing on improving the soil instead of improving what I was doing with the plants. Yeah, right. Yeah, soil, yeah. That's in the soil. Yeah, I mean, that's the bit that dominates the dominant factor. And as long as the plants, yeah, and sunlight, soil and sunlight, as long as they get water. So that's it. Yeah. So it's quite simple. And you've got that idea that it needs to be replenished is important one. It's not a one off thing you do. You might put more compost in, you know, six months later, if you've done a significant amount of composting or every three months, depending on the soil quality, you want to be putting some more nutrient into the soil. And you've got to find the balance to this. There's a bit there, but basically the worm juice is fantastic for that as well. Worm juice you can put on a bit more often. mixed 10 to 1 with water is quite potent. That's what I love about worm farms, shame you're not getting your worm juice because that's what's so great about them. I still sort of do. I get the castings and I soak them in water. Oh, you can make a worm tea. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's actually an advanced method because you don't need to actually get, if you're getting the liquid out, you tend not to, but you can create worm tea. Yeah. Don't be telling her that. She's like, I'm so advanced. Oh, I see. I'm too advanced for the tea. Oh, my Lord. I have to send you a Worm Farmer t-shirt. Yeah. I've got the stickers on everything. I've got my little stickers, the worms on everything. There are a range of t-shirts with Worm Farmer on them. Oh, really? Oh, that's cool. Do you have one for advanced Worm Farmer? Advanced. I'll have the advanced on there for you. We have great data because we have a longitudinal study we've been running since... almost since we started the program where we ask, you know, it gets up to 6,000 people responding each year. And we ask questions like, you know, have you changed your other behaviours since taking up the program? And we've got some really amazing stats on that, which shows that people improving their other recycling habits. They're improving their they're reducing the food waste in the first place, which makes total sense. As I said before, you're managing that food, you're seeing it go into the caddy. So you reduce it. But then on top of that. people even just say they're doing, they're thinking about waste more broadly. Of course. So they're separating their recycling better. More mindful. Yeah, so you can tell council that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would say for our listeners, even if you don't get the subsidy, which I didn't when I purchased the worm farm off the Compost Revolution website, it's still very cost-effective and much more cost-effective than if you went to a large garden supply store or something like that. I don't want to quote you. It was like 80 bucks for my worm farm. Yeah. Yeah. We're competitive. I mean, yeah. Barlings is, is cheap too, but the thing is you don't get help. You don't get the help to choose the right system. You don't get the training. You don't get the support that we give you after you purchase, which is critical. You have those questions you've got. You can go in and ask those anytime by the way online. I will. Yeah. Yeah. I'll stop asking you, Avril. get answered by a human being. You can use the chat bot if you're in a hurry and you like that sort of thing. But if you want to talk to a human, you can choose that option. And, you know, our, our team passionate about making sure you get past any, any bumps on the road to becoming a, you know, lifelong back into trying to really normalise this and scale this up so that everyone in Australia is doing it. So that's our mission. And yeah, that's not the mission of the big retailers. Did you ever think your career would be composting, talking about worm farms and composting? It's always a conversation stopper when I say at a dinner party that I'm in worms. You could really take it to the next level and say shit or something like that. Like you could be like, or we. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's it's interesting. I mean, I've been passionate about sustainability since I kind of sort of, you know, changed my. career in 2000 when I started to work on issues that I believe were important. And you'd sort of gravitate towards it, you know, if you're interested in social justice, you start to think about climate and the interactions of those two things. And, you know, this is such a grassroots and practical thing. I do a lot of work in active political activism as well. And that stuff's harder. You know, everyone understands this and I really, you know, it's not spiritual on one level, but yeah, this is a human level, we understand this is the right thing to do. And so it's great to work on something that, you know, every both sides of politics or every side of politics. Yeah, it's about how you go about it and whether it's the market or there should be some intervention, of course, there's nuances in the in the but it's a wonderful thing that you know, you can have a very positive conversation. And it's a gateway into not just the gardening, but it's a gateway into broader perspective on life. And Costa often talks about this, he's an inspiration to me and I've known him for many years. And he talks about, you know, this is about, you know, we have effectively a compost system inside us. Our gut biome is doing composting in a similar way. You know, and this just reconnects us. And it's so critical for humanity to reconnect with nature and our... our source of our life and we've lost that inside the jungle. And so this is a great base for all sorts of engagement in the world and Milkwood Permaculture is another great group. If you haven't interviewed them, you should. Oh yeah. We'd love to get costed too. Yeah. Seeing that you're a friend. You didn't pick up on that, Bernadette. Just forwarding him this podcast. We did try and stalk him at Flurry Add, but then we thought we missed him. He's had to catch, he's moving so fast. He's so busy, he's so busy. Back in the day when he wasn't quite as busy, I used to get a little bit of time with him. He lives in Bondi, he lives a few streets away. Oh, does he? Yeah, right. Bondi. Yeah, he once came and helped me in the garden. We had a, we're called a permablitz, which is a group of people coming together to help. do a garden and we're doing the fun. That's so cool. Yeah, and he came and gave a talk. It was quite inspirational actually. And so I just happened to say, look, everyone's coming to help me on the garden. Figuring he lives in the neighborhood. I said, I'll just swing by. Cause I know he often did the, he was often at the markets, the food markets in the morning. And I said, can you swing by and give everyone a little pep talk? And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And he came and gave us amazing five minutes. thing, chat to half dozen people, just describing how, you know, it wasn't about the food we were growing on the nature's chip, it was about the community that we were growing, about the roads or the arteries of our towns and our neighborhoods. And we need to get out of the houses, get out of our back gardens even. That's right. That's not a bad place to be. Into the front and into the connection and community. What's amazing is he was in a bit of a hurry. So he said, he gave us a great talk and then was rushing off. And I just sort of quickly followed him and to thank him. Turned out he was giving and he was taking, he was doing a course in Parramatta, which is like 40, 35 at least, 35 minutes. Against traffic. Yeah, depending. Yeah, a bondo. So he'd take, it was, he was in the lunch break. So he was right. He raced all the way from there. Small group of people, a little inspirational talk and then was racing back. Not amazing. I mean, that, that sums him up. Like he's just always there to inspire and to support this movement. And he can articulate it better than I ever could, but it's much more than just the food waste and. and even the growing, it's much, much bigger than that. So yeah, I guess in some ways I'm surprised, I'm talking about worms so much in my career, but it's sort of connected, it's all connected. It is, yeah, yeah. And you can hear the passion, you know, in your voice when you're talking about it. And you've got all the stats behind it and that's great, but it's the passion that drives it. I've loved the stats though, cause that's sort of more, my dad was a statistician. So I've actually really loved hearing more of that, that side of it too has been really interesting to me. But... I'm conscious. Time we're coming up to our hour. Yes, we are. I just wanted to thank you so much. I learned. I learned a lot. I learned heaps and I really thank you for spending your time with us and helping us share the message in our community. Yeah, thank you. That's great, David. Thank you so much. And maybe we could catch up again another time. See. Yeah, we can talk about more. There's lots to talk about. We've got new products coming online. So we do design as well. So one of our things is, yeah, I guess that's the thing as well as Yeah, being passionate about this mission, it's about how do we bring, you know, really smart design that makes it really attractive for people to join. That's where the farm, we helped design that farm product that you've got. That was really important that it looks good and it's very different. And you can change the color. I literally picked it because it looked good. Yeah, that's right. And that's really, that's how shallow I am. And you know, that that is the difference between myself and Bernadette. You want to see Bernadette's garden like she is just, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's amazing, whereas I'm really a bit more rough and ready. And like I would nearly go to my local tip and pick up those worm farms that people drop off there where Bernadette would be like, oh my God, no. Or my husband, for his work, he has some polystyrene boxes and I'd be like, I'll have them. Don't be afraid, bring it on with them. He's like, I'm bringing them to work. And I'm like, all right, okay. But Bernardier would never do that. So it just shows you the difference, right? Yeah. And DIY is great too. And you know, that's reusing that's totally good, but yeah, for not, not for everyone and there's something about being able to still do this, but have a good looking garden. Absolutely. Yeah. Like the farm looks good on your balcony or in your, in your, in your sort of near your house and that was really a design, a conscious design decision. Let's make it. So people can change the colour, you can put the wooden legs on if you like. The legs, I love the legs. And it doesn't have to look ugly because most of the other worm farms look a bit ugly. Whoever designed the legs, give that guy a pay rise. That would be me. Thank you. I was looking for one. Ah, love it. That's great. Nailed it. That was a great chat today. Did you enjoy that? Yeah, I feel really energised and excited. And I feel like a bit of an eco warrior now, like we've got a, you know, yeah, I'm inspired to do more composting and more for our local community. Absolutely, yes. It's something that, you don't have to do it on large scale. Yes. You can just do something small. And sometimes it's just about starting that conversation. So because we're rolling out FOGO now, let's talk about the other options for people that may want to also do something. at home. I think it's great. Just to be aware and look we don't have any pets in our home but we do have worms and we love them very much so a great alternative if you're a family that travels a bit or something like that a really easy pet for the kids to get involved with and for them to start you know that composting journey from a young age. That's right and you know what like shout out to your local people that have worms, your local community garden if you want to. see one in action and take the worm farm home for a night. And as David mentioned, if you've got any questions, they've got the robot and they've got real people to answer any questions you might have about composting a worm farm in real time. So, compost revolution, that's all you have to do is pop that in your Google. compostrevolution.com.au Yep, it'll come up and their website is amazing. It's very interactive. They'll answer all your questions. You can go to any shop and buy a worm farm. However... you'll probably the knowledge that these guys have, you hop on, they will tailor it for your needs. And they will have the support there because a lot of people that start on this journey, worm farming or compost may not stay with it. So having that extra support from Compost Revolution will help you through all those questions and they will tailor exactly what type of farm is for you. So hope you enjoyed the podcast. Enjoy! Enjoy! Slán le! Grab my cup!