[SPONSORED CONTENT] Clean & Green Organics is an organic composting and worm farming facility in Sydney’s western suburbs kicking all sorts of clean green goals with the help of a brand-new Hyundai 210LC-9 excavator, which is being used primarily to load and feed a waste grinder. It’s a job that requires constant stability and reliability and the new investment is proving a godsend for the team.
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CGO is rapt with the latest addition to its machinery fleet
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Clean & Green Organics (CGO) is all about encouraging local councils, businesses and contractors to divert organic waste they produce from landfill into their recycling facility where it can be converted into rich, nutrient full compost and landscaping products.
The organisation currently has seven staff and are in the process of upgrading their facility which will allow the team to expand their processing area, as well as the breadth of services it’s able to offer.
“We were running an operation similar to this many years ago, collecting organic waste from 130 Woolworths stores, composting with worms, bagging and selling back to Woollies through Big W,” operations director Emilia Mastroianni says. “It was a closed loop system that Woollies loved and so did their customers!”
For the organisation, the goal is to divert organic waste from landfill, improve lifeless soils and enabling the growth of healthy plants and most importantly educated the community & businesses about recycling and healthy soils. “It is important for people to understand that putting a plastic bags or rubbish in the green recycling bin may not seem like a big deal but the costs that adds to councils to sort and recyclers like us to clean are huge”.
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The Clean & Green Organics team with their new excavator
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Clean Green Organics produces Australian Standard soil conditioners, garden mixes, turf underlay and an earth blend, which is great for water retention in garden beds.
“Our compost is mixed and monitored daily to stringent standards. Our company is ISO accredited AS/NZS 4801, ISO 9901 and ISO 14001 which involves high standards of work practice and equipment which is why we bought the Hyundai R210LC-9. “It means all the required standards and some.”
“Incoming materials are processed daily using our new Hyundai excavator to feed the grinder, among other things. Our competitor’s compost still have plastics in them and you can see it in the final product, we pride ourselves on having the best looking and nutrient dense commercial compost in Sydney.”
“We deal with lots of people: from individual landscapers; to gardeners; construction companies; developers; local councils and waste companies.”
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Emilia and her husband’s interest in recycling has grown organically over the last 20 years.
“We started worm farming in the late 1990s. We always thought this method would be the future, we can’t keep putting everything into landfill forever, and we need to bring life back to our over used soils”.
“Worms can compost the most difficult organic material and we keep learning and improving our systems every day.”
“There are a lot of companies in this space that don’t have thorough waste-screening processes. You can see plastic in their compost and you’re putting that in your vegetable garden.”
Encouragingly, municipal councils in western Sydney are starting to look to send their waste to recycling facilities, rather than sending it all straight to landfill.
“We are currently tendering to Councils whereby we process their kerbside and supply them with bagged Soil Conditioner they can give it to their ratepayers. Ratepayers receive two bags a year that is effectively produced from household waste collected in their area.”
This is known in the industry as a ‘closed loop’ system and it is initiatives such as this that councils around Australia are becoming increasingly willing to try out.
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Clean & Green Organics’ staff and fleet count is sure to grow in coming years. In addition to their brand-new 23.3-tonne Hyundai R210LC-9 excavator, they have several other heavy duty machines such as Wheel Loaders and Screens.
This excavator comes strapped with a Cumming QSB6.7 engine and has been designed to allow more efficient airflow while smoothly allocating fuel, resulting in more power, a better transient response, and low fuel consumption.
Key features of the Tier 3 R210LC-9 include the Power Boost Control System that gives 10 per cent more digging force; and an Auto Deceleration System that reduces engine speed when the remote control valves are in neutral for more than four seconds. After 60 seconds, engine speed is reduced to a low idle, which saves on diesel.
“It’s fantastic to have a new excavator of our own; we have been hiring equipment for the last 10 months and some of it has not been great, with not all of the functions working as they should or being there at all. Machine down time costs a business like ours a lot of money and credibility, we need to keep product flowing in and out.” Emilia says.
This is the first piece of Hyundai gear that Clean & Green Organics has purchased via The Porter Group. Their new Hyundai 210LC-9 excavator even has heated seats, which the team says they’ll appreciate very much this winter.
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The new Hyundai 210LC-9 excavator is doing all the heavy lifting out west
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Site manager Mitch Rix operates the excavator on a daily basis and is suitably impressed.
“There were certain things we were looking for in an excavator, certain features,” Mitch explains. “You can see this is a big site, so it needs to be multi-purposed. We are constructing a new pad and this excavator will be doing a lot of ground work for the expansion as well as the compost and grinding work.”
Mitch likes the fact that it is very stable when operating on a mound or anywhere else; the mechanics never seem to be straining during operation.
“This is my first time using a Hyundai excavator and so far it’s been great,” he says. “We looked at getting a slightly bigger excavator but that didn’t really give us any benefit and we didn’t really need the extra power.
“As operators we love it.”
Site administration manager Brooke Grech has been impressed with the pre- and aftersales service provided by the Sydney branch of The Porter Group.
“The aftersales service from Porter has been fantastic; the communication that you get is superb and that’s really important for us,” Brooke concludes.