UTS is facilitating the circular economy by processing 50 tonnes of food waste on-campus per year into soil conditioner, sent to local farming communities to grow garlic, which returns as food to UTS and other Sydney outlets.
Project summary
This circular economy project is a collaboration involving students, academic staff from multiple disciplines, campus operations, and industry partners.
Over three years they worked together to create a functional circular economy model sending nutrients from food waste generated at UTS back to peri-urban communities to support local small-scale agriculture.
Food waste is collected around campus in dedicated bins in the kitchens and food retail outlets. Around 50 tonnes per year is processed on campus in two food waste dehydrator machines to produce soil conditioner. This is collected every week and sent to the garlic farm west of Sydney.
The system demonstrates to everyone involved, including the food retail outlets, waste managers, staff, students and the broader community, that genuine circular resource recycling is achievable and viable.
Dr Michelle Zeibots: The Hartley Vale Good Garlic Company is located at a farm called The Refinery near Lithgow.
At my farm we produce organically grown garlic using compost that's been made from coffee grounds and food waste from UTS.
The circular economy is a process that uses waste from one part of the system and then uses that waste to produce something new at another point in the system. And that's what we do with the compost that we use to fertilize our soils, that helps us to grow delicious and very healthy food.
Associate Professor Dena Fam: The collaboration really crosses teaching and learning and research, but also operations communications. We had really good engagement with the communications teams at UTS that were actually involved in developing comms based on the workshops and research we did on this project.
The living lab is really about getting students to intimately experience a system and have the opportunity to intervene somewhere or influence how that system changes, to be improved in the sense of having a really operational circular economy.
Ian McInnes: Our cleaners are instrumental in collecting the food waste around UTS. They sort through the food waste to remove any impurities and prepare it for the food dehydrator.
After 24 hours the food waste is removed from the machine and is now classed as soil conditioner and is taken to be used at the garlic farm.
Associate Professor Dena Fam: We really need to work collaboratively to be able to operationalize a circular economy in practice. And what UTS is trying to do is complete the cycle from the production of food waste, the processing of food waste right through to the reuse of food waste as a resource in farming.
And UTS is a pilot for something much bigger. We have the opportunity to do that at a much bigger scale, a city scale, a precinct scale.
The key benefits of the project include:
- 50 tonnes of food waste annually diverted from landfill
- Less waste transport because the soil conditioner is processed on campus
- Collaborative model, involving industry, government and community partners
- Achieving a genuine, working, Circular Economy initiative
The project is scalable and could be replicated in similar large organisations that generate large volumes of food waste.
For more information, read our news article on turning food into waste.
Project timeframe
2018 – ongoing
SDG targets addressed by this project
Responsible consumption and production:
12.5 – By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.
12. 6 - Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle.
Key contacts
Key collaborators
Dena Fam, Institute of Sustainable Futures
