BioPak helps Perth café divert more than 33,000 kilograms of waste

Ethan MillerOctober 10, 2018, 9:36 pmOctober 10, 2018

Perth café Yelo has diverted 33,095 kilograms of waste from landfill and created 23 tonnes of compost since signing up to BioPak’s composting service in June.

Yelo Owner Mike Pond says the service allows patrons to enjoy the convenience of disposable takeaway packaging, including coffee cups, while doing the right thing by the environment.

“This is a fantastic initiative, which we believe will help divert potentially tonnes of waste away from landfills and turned into composting that can be used for commercial-level agriculture – at no cost to our customers,” Mike says. “In fact, the composting service will save us more than 20 per cent a year in waste bills.”

The service allows customers to dispose of used coffee cups and BioPak compostable takeaway food packaging in specially designed collection bins placed at their local cafés or workplaces.

These compost bins are collected weekly and sent to commercial composting facilities to be processed and turned into soil compost for gardens or farms.

“In Australia, we send more than eight million tonnes of organic waste to landfill every year, including 1.5 million tonnes of food waste,” BioPak Founder Richard Fine says.

“The problem with this is that when food waste decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, resulting in enormous damage to our environment.

“Switching to compostable foodservice packaging, including compostable coffee cups, can divert much of this material from going to landfill.”