'Pot up a seedling' will help kids reuse BioCups by filling them with potting mix and a seedling to take home to plant directly in the ground. What a great way to teach them about recycling, composting and gardening. We love this!

Cups that do not get potted will be collected in our bins and fed to OSCA – On-Site Composting Apparatus – brought to the event by the lovely people at Worms Downunder.

OSCA is an automated, aerobic composting technology developed by WDU Sustainability in Queensland, Australia. Using minimal energy, OSCA processes organic waste streams including food waste (food preparation waste, plate scrapings, bones, seafood, etc.), agricultural waste, compostable packaging, paper and cardboard, manure, and green waste. OSCA can produce a high quality, safe and immediately usable compost within 10-14 days. OSCA is a continuous feed system – waste is loaded in one end and finished odourless compost ejected from the other. Perfect!

Dr Pene Mitchell, director at Worms Downunder is also a speaker at the event and has been active in sustainable waste management since completing a PhD in sustainability and starting Worm Downunder with partner Dr Paul Harrey in 2005. The organisation has become a leader in organics waste management, locally manufacturing a range of small to large scale Worm Habitats and automated composters. Allowing waste to be sustainably processed into nutrient rich garden product everywhere. If there are any cups left from the Real Food Festival, Worms Downunder will take them home to feed the worms.

Worms Downunder also work with another one of our customers – The University of Sunshine Coast (USC). They installed an OSCA there to compost all the Universities food scraps and our compostable plates, cups and cutlery sold at their food outlets. The University also installed specific compostable, recyclable, paper and landfil bins across the campus to encourage better waste sorting. This initiative has resulted in approximately 70% reduction in waste going to landfill and contributed to USC being awarded the 'Sunshine Coast Council Good Recycling Award 2013' and the 2014 Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability Green Gown Award for Carbon Reduction. 

Read more about OSCA
Read more about Worms Downunder
Real Food Festival
Montville Coffee