Draft Guideline: Better Practice Composting

Overview

The Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (the department) is producing a series of industry specific guidelines to provide external stakeholders further information on how the department carries out its regulatory functions under Part V Division 3 of the Environmental Protection Act 1986.

The draft Guideline: Better practice composting is the first guideline developed in this series. The guideline was developed by the department in collaboration with the Western Australian branch of the Australian Organics Recycling Association (AORA WA). Members of AORA WA formed a working group with the department, helping to:

• develop the guideline framework
• provide feedback from an industry perspective
• develop approaches to manage economically viable operations while protecting and mitigating possible environmental impacts.   

The department acknowledges and thanks AORA WA and its members for the significant resources they have contributed to working with the department on this project. We hope that in working together, the guideline will help to achieve a positive outcome for the environment, industry and all other stakeholders.

The guideline sets out the department’s information requirements for the composting industry and how regulation under Part V of the EP Act will achieve the objectives of the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Strategy 2030 (Waste Strategy 2030).

Objective 3 of Waste Strategy 2030 seeks that ‘Western Australians protect the environment by managing waste responsibly’ and includes the target of all waste facilities operating to ‘better practice’ by 2030. 

The guideline provides environmental performance objectives and minimum standards for the construction and operations of composting facilities that establish how composting facilities can achieve the Waste Strategy 2030 target of operating to ‘better practice’.

The consultation period ran from 25 May 2020 to 25 November 2020.

Consultation update

Thank you to everyone who made a submission during the consultation phase.  

All feedback was considered in finalising the Guideline: Better practice organics recycling. Submissions were collated into the supporting a consultation summary report.

Related documents

Guideline: Better practice organics recycling

Consultation summary report - Guideline: Better practice organics recycling