2 minute read
SUSTAINABITY AT THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FLOWER AND GARDEN SHOW
Have you ever wondered just what happens to all the amazing gardens and floral displays at the end of the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show? Darren Free from Van Schaik’s Bio Gro explains the process, as the proud Sustainability Partner of the show.
Each year at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show (MIFGS), questions are asked as to where all the garden displays go when the show is over? As a result of this, prior to the show starting last year, Van Schaik’s Bio Gro was appointed Sustainability Partner of the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.
With its highly recognised capacity and capabilities in organics processing, the Van Schaik family were honoured to be given this prestigious opportunity to recover and recycle all the organic materials at the conclusion of MIFGS.
For more than 40 years, Van Schaik’s Bio Gro has been a leading innovator, working in partnership with companies and local councils to achieve optimum recovery of organic material. Recovered forestry material, construction timbers, agricultural by-products, green and food organics are composted and processed into a variety of high-quality products.
Unique to the resource recovery industry, Bio Gro has a circular recovery model. Bio Gro processes and composts pine bark recovered from the timber industry and turns it into premium growing media. This is then used by the nursery industry to grow plants and trees, including pine trees and thus completing the circle. This growing media is also bagged and sold into the retail market for home gardeners.
Subsequent to the success of the project at last year`s show, Bio Gro signed a long-term agreement to be the ongoing Sustainability Partner of MIFGS. Enabling MIFGS, year on year, to increase its sustainability targets is our priority. Last year we were able to recover and divert from landfill an estimated 550m3 of organics, including mulch, flowers and structural timbers. This is the equivalent of 25 kerbside waste trucks dumping at our recovery site in South Dandenong rather than going to landfill.
Clockwise from above: A collection point for materials to be recycled from last year's MIFGS; Used materials being collected to be transported back to Bio Gro in Dandenong South; MIFGS materials back at the Bio Gro site in Dandenong South.
At our processing site the display garden construction timbers, including pallets, were ground up and graded into garden and roadside mulches. The flora displays from the Great Hall, along with the soil and mulch from the outdoor gardens, were composted to create a horticultural media used to grow fruit, vegetables and plants.
“It’s a great feeling to know that the end of the show is no longer like a demolition site, it’s now a resource recovery site. Thanks to Bio Gro, organic materials no longer go to landfill, 550m3 diverted, that’s good for everyone” stated award winning landscaper Martin Semken of Semken Landscaping after hearing last year’s total figure.
every year, this is an important demonstration of the endeavors and ability of Van Schaik’s Bio Gro to reduce the generation of environmentally harmful methane gas entering our atmosphere.
Emma Daly, Bio Gro’s General Manager of People and Culture, says “it’s all about landfill diversion. The more we recover the better for the environment".
Van Schaik's Bio Gro look forward to continuing their partnership with MIFGS as their Sustainability Partner in 2021.
