There’s a better way to deal with waste

With the recent Pikitup strike leaving families with heaps of waste at their gates, a local self-sustaining farm has the answer to all your waste-removal issues.

“Monaghan Farm is a residential eco estate embarking on a journey to zero waste through a holistic recycling programme, which includes a food-waste recycling and worm farming project,” Rebecca Henderson, Earth Probiotic marketing and sales executive, told the News during a visit to the farm they service.

90 per cent of the 60 households on the farm grow their own vegetables, many feeding the soil by composting their kitchen waste.

Pieter Tolmay, farm manager and earthworm enthusiast, comes from an agricultural background and always has had a passion for the environment. Through his experience in landscaping he first-hand encountered the impact of harmful chemical inputs in gardening and agriculture.

In 2014 Monaghan implemented Earth Probiotic’s Bokashi Food Waste Recycling method as a natural means to create compost from residential and restaurant food waste.

“Bokashi, which is wheat bran inoculated with beneficial bacteria, enables food waste to be composted safely and quickly, while saving 235 kilogram of CO2 emissions per ton composted.

“Monaghan’s composting method provides a complete organic waste solution as it also incorporates horse and cow manure, garden and food waste produced by the estate, meaning no organic waste needs to be removed or landfilled,” Rebecca said.

Basically, the farm takes your food waste and, among trapping rain water and using sun panels for electricity, you can use it again and again to grow more food. Other materials such as plastic also is being recycled and used to build children’s jungle gyms.

“If Eskom turns off all the power, if our water is cut, we still will be able to go about our daily lives as usual,” Pieter said.

How it works:

• The estate’s restaurant, The Other Side, collects the food waste in airtight drums, layering it with Bokashi.

• Once the waste has fermented for two weeks, the landscaping team collects the waste and adds it into their compost heaps.

• Thereafter the partially composted materials are fed to a worm farm where the highly valuable worm castings are produced.

“The great thing about these initiatives,” Pieter said, “is that it’s not costing us money, but saving us money.”

Thus far Monaghan farm successfully has diverted more than 1,5 tons of food waste from landfill.

Also read:

• Trash-diggers the town’s recyclers

• Now anyone can farm, anywhere

• Project promotes proactive living