The Compost Ball

The Compost Ball was held in Leichhardt Town Hall, Sydney, during International Composting Awareness Week.

The Compost Ball was a fundraising event, raising money for a small community employment composting venture in Aceh in Indonesia. The soils in Aceh were ravaged by the tsunami, and this community venture was completely wiped out.

Ball profits will be helping local farmers reclaim land whilst creating employment at the same time.

The Ball was also the occasion of the first Compost Leadership Awards, which were presented by the Minister assisting the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Verity Firth.

Local governments featured in three of the awards: the "˜Most Innovative Resource Recovery Contract for Recycled Organics' was won by the MacArthur group of councils for their regional contract with WSN; the "˜Most improved contamination management in source separated organics' was won by Campbelltown City Council for their efforts in reducing contamination from peaks of 16% down to an average of less than 1%; the "˜ "Close-the-loop" award for Local government , most progressive recycled organics purchasing policy' was won by Penrith City Council for their contract commitment to purchasing back recycled organics for use in their parks and gardens.

The other awards were for "˜Industry leadership', which went to Tony Emery, the managing director of SoilCo and current chairman of Compost NSW; and "˜Community leadership in composting', which went to Peter Rutherford, who was a co-founder of Earthworks and who has run community composting workshops at Kimbriki for the past seven years.