Joost Bakker wants to show Sydney restaurateurs that their kitchen waste is precious and he’s got the herbs to prove it.
Mr Bakker, a Melbourne artist and passionate recycler, has brought to Sydney a van-load of thriving oregano, thyme and parsley plants growing in soil that was, in its previous incarnation - kitchen waste from Rockpool Bar & Grill in Melbourne.
The plants are on display at the Royal Hall of Industries in Moore Park today and tomorrow as part of Restaurant 2010, a hospitality trade exhibition.
”I want restaurateurs to see these plants and go, ‘Oh, I wish I could get thyme like that,”’ Mr Bakker said. ”And I say, ‘Well, you know what? These have actually been grown in restaurant waste.”’
To ensure that they are safe for use in connection with food crops, the kitchen scraps have undergone in-vessel composting, an industrial process that bakes waste at high temperatures in a controlled environment to ensure optimum decomposition.
”In-vessel composting is a very expensive way of doing it, but it’s the only way to do it safely,” Mr Bakker said. ”Everything gets to such a high temperature that it’s safe.” The process destroys, for example, seeds that could otherwise contaminate a crop.
Thousands of cubic metres of composted green waste were sitting idle in recycling yards, Mr Bakker said, and food producers were ”scared to use it because they don’t know if it has been composted properly. It could have seeds in it.”
Mr Bakker said he envisioned a near-future in which all restaurant waste underwent in-vessel composting and was used by food growers who would then sell their produce back to restaurants, creating a sustainable ”closed-loop system”.
”I hear constantly how bad the restaurant industry is in terms of waste, but it won’t always be that way.”
