Hi Alec;
I live up in FNQ - Mareeba to be exact. It's a small country town about
50km inland from Cairns. I sure can't help you out much as far as what they
do in Sydney. One assumes that if a small country town is composting its
green waste then the whole world must be doing it. Sorry!

There is a machine that visits the local tips every few months and
shreds the green waste. It's Huge! Like about two semi-trailers long! It
SCREAMS when it's chewing its way through branches, limbs, and even tree
trunks.A couple of front end loaders feed the machine. They pick up
bucket-fulls of green waste (any organic matter) and dumps it into a hopper.
Out the other end of this shredder comes piles of shredded green waste.

Our council piles this green waste into heaps. Mixes it and turns it
until it starts to look like compost. It gets pretty hot! They have even had
it catch on fire a few times, so it can smell somewhat like wood smoke
sometimes. Normally, it smells like soil, flavoured with tip essence. Any
smell disappears within a few days.

Our local chicken farm dumps all their floor scrapings (shit, broken
eggs, litter, and spilled feed) at the tip. Our council starts a few piles
of these scrapings and the composted mulch. After a few months of cooking
and turning, we have "Dynamic Lifter" but does it stink. It takes a few
weeks before that settles down. It is a bit "HOT" for plants but when used
as a side dressing or dug in and left to "Cool off", it makes wonderful
fertiliser.

If your local council is not doing that for you, PITY, they should be...

Norm

"Alec McQueen" wrote in message
...
Norm
Where do you live? I have been looking for a similar type of service in
my area (NW Sydney), without much luck. I would love to find somewhere
that does this.
Cheers
Alec

Aus News wrote:

I've been using the mulch from our local tip. Our council shreds all
the
green waste, piles it up, turns it, ages it, and sells it back as mulch.
I
think it's fine and it's cheap. It costs $9.90 a box trailer load (or
small
ute). I've been using it for three years now and no problems. It has
done
wonders for our claggy soil....

Norm


"pixo" wrote in message
...

Hi,

There are different types of Mulch you can get; Pea straw, Peat Mulch
(and
feed), Cottage Mulch, Red Wood Mulch, Pine Bark Mulch, Opti Mulch,
Garden
Mulch - just to list those available from Yarra Valley Water and a
couple

of

others I saw at Bunnings on the weekend.

This amount of choice indicates that they do different things, or are of
different value, so how do you choose which type of mulch to buy?

Pixo