Optimising Organic Waste and Cultivating Circularity for Australian Agriculture

Transforming to a circular economy will be essential for meeting Australia’s Net Zero Targets, energy security, food security and healthy environments. It also presents significant opportunities for new income streams, regenerating nature and public health benefits. While there are pockets of innovation within Australia’s agricultural, fisheries and forestry sector (like managing organic waste via anaerobic digestion with co-benefits of energy and fertiliser generation), there is significant progress to be made, particularly in relation to organic waste streams, which present different challenges to plastics and other materials because they are biodegradable, and can also pose biosecurity risks. 

Circularity goes beyond simply recycling. Scaling-up requires investment in waste reduction strategies too and understanding the enabling environment of policies and regulation, logistics, market readiness and stakeholder ‘readiness’ to transform. Identifying impact hotspots across the whole agricultural circular value-chain will be key, including brokering relationships between disparate actors from farmers, agronomist advisors and agri-businesses to waste managers, local councils, fertiliser and energy retailers and food consumers. Our approach takes a stakeholder co-production strategy, to understand the pain-points and opportunities of key actors upfront, to guide the identification of drivers, enablers and industry priorities in the development of a stakeholder-led and evidence-based roadmap for Australian agriculture to transition to a circular economy. This will be an essential resource for Australian rural business, assisting them to transition to a circular economy system.