Timothy Baynes
CSIRO Land and Water
Dr. Tim Baynes has worked across a broad range of sustainability research areas including water accounting, distributed electricity generation, urban development modeling, risk and resilience assessment, climate adaptation and is currently spending a lot of time thinking about material flows.
We present progress and results of a continuing project to re-cycle organic resources within an Australian child care business with three outcomes of different themes: turning food and garden waste into a resource for growing food on-site; enabling a direct experience of micro-industrial ecology in early childhood; and education and support for organic resource recycling within the wider community connected to the Rozelle Child Care Center (referred to hereafter as ‘the Center’).
Organic waste is an issue in a number of sectors including: retail food, food processing, the health sector and the education sector. A common feature of early childhood education is the provision of daytime meals with attendant food waste in preparation and partial consumption. The result can be thought of as unwanted food waste, or as a steady flow of organic resources.
Approximately 100m3 of waste flows are generated annually by the Center, of which 33m3 are food and garden organic waste. Prior to this project the majority of organic waste was removed by a contracted service.
Two worm farms, each greater than 1 cubic meter in size are host to around 20,000 worms (mostly Eisenia foetida, E. andrei and Lumbricus rubellus). This population has the approximate capacity to process 5 kg of organic waste per day (~10m3/year). Capacity varies seasonally as does the flow of garden organic waste. Composting on-site also accommodates up to another 10m3/year. Additionaly, an area of the Center’s grounds has been reserved to grow food plants and receive the processed organic waste. There is not yet the capacity to consistently supply food to the Center from this garden.
Composting and growing food are popular in community gardens and elementary schools but there are few examples in the early education sector. The Center has provided a model case for processing organic waste on-site with both financial co-benefits for the business and education benefits for children and their families.
The Australian Early Years Learning Framework has three fundamental components to early childhood development:
- Being – making meaning of the world through engaging and exploring the complex and fulfilling interactions of life.
- Belonging - acknowledges children’s interdependence with others and identification with a family, cultural group, a neighborhood and the wider community
- Becoming - emphasizes learning to participate fully and actively in society.
Part of the project was to contribute to these developmental outcomes and allow children aged 3-5 years guided access to the garden, worm farms and composting: to see what happens to their food waste, and understand material interdependence and complex notions of cyclical causality within a microcosm of industrial ecology.
Another core output was to promote a more sustainable community by leveraging the Center’s key position in a network of more than 80 families. Far from being hidden, the worm farms are located near the entrance to the Center: reminding and normalizing organic recycling to parents and other visitors. The Center also hosted information sessions on constructing and maintaining worm farms and composting.
• Business and industry practices / case studies , • Education in sustainability science
