Once collected from kerbside, your food and garden organics are transported to a local composting facility. Jeffries and Peats are the main two large commercial composting facilities operating in South Australia.
Materials are placed in wind-rows and composted for 8-10 weeks to mature. This allows for contaminants such as plastic bags and items to be detected and extracted.
Once broken down, the material needs to be screened to remove contaminants such as plastic bags, irrigation pipe, glass and metal objects that have been incorrectly placed in a green bin. This is a difficult and expensive process.
Plastics are sucked out, metals are removed using magnets. Optical sorting technology removes plastics, textiles and rubber. Other technology removes and sorts glass, stone ceramics and rocks from the composted material.
Once contaminants are removed rich, fertile compost, soil and mulch products are produced and used in South Australian broadacre farms, vineyards, glass houses and household gardens.
You can see how the process works here:
Jefferies:
Peats: