Gerry Gillespie has taken on many roles over the years in private and public organisations in resource recovery positions:
  • Founding Member– Zero Waste International Alliance
  • Board Member – Zero Waste International Trust
  • Founding Committee Member – International Bio-char Initiative
  • Founding Chair – Zero Waste New Zealand Trust
  • Member - Australia’s National Strategic Phosphorus Advisory Group
  • Principal Organics Consultant – Resource Recovery Australia
  • Organics Consultant – StumpJump Foundation
 
With expertise and qualification in the following areas:
  • Domestic resource collection systems
  • Community engagement
  • Training and Assessment
  • Domestic and commercial worm farming
  • Composting systems of any scale
  • State and Local government systems
  • The Zero Waste movement world wide
  • Community business – salvage and resale
  • Innovation and technology exchange
  • Working with Local Government in addressing resource management issues
  • Renewable energy from biomass
  • Publishing and media strategies
  • Public Speaking Presentations
 
Gerry has been involved in the recovery of wasted resources and their reuse for the benefit of community and business for the past 25 years. His experience and skills mean he's widely regarded as a leading edge proponent in innovative resource recovery and economic development and related systems analysis.
 
His experience includes a 21-year period of working in a senior positions in government, initially with the ACT Government Department of Urban Services then for 12 years with the NSW Government in the Office of Environment and Heritage in the Department of the Premier and Cabinet.
 
Gerry's priority now is providing leading edge services with a focus on ROTS to communities and farmers alike. Wherever possible, he's keen to work with farming families to help reduce their input costs and increase their soil health.
 
Background
Gerry commenced writing and publishing books on recycling and waste reduction for local councils in 1988, developing a focus on the reuse of organics to soil.
 
He led the $1.6 million wheeled bin trial in Canberra, ACT Australia’s capital, which involved a unique strategy for community engagement, where the focus was getting the communities involved to take ownership of the program. Processes associated with variations in the trial included an extensive range of waste audits and direct bin audits with a series of newsletters to households and extensive community meetings and public conversations.
 
In 1993 he established and managed the Worm Farming Research facility at Belconnen Landfill, ACT, which operated for four years. Within that work he developed a simple process for the removal of heavy metals from sewage sludge and spoke at many Worm Association meetings in Australia and New Zealand with other noted vermiculture experts.
 
Following a leadership role in the development of the Canberra ACT 'No Waste by 2010' strategy, Gerry was asked to be the founding manager of the Zero Waste Trust in New Zealand. This involved the development of a Business Plan for the Trust and a networking strategy to draw all 150 community-based recycling groups together. During this period he was involved in a broad range of projects and new businesses throughout the country, including the establishment of ‘Second Time’ – a tip face recycling themed business based on a Maori Marae in Manukau near Auckland. He was involved in the very first public meetings which established the highly successful Xtreme Waste in Raglan, New Zealand: www.xtremezerowaste.org.nz
 
The position of NZ Zero Waste Manager, subsequently led to his involvement as an advisor and public speaker in many international programs and events on resource recovery. These included work in the UK, France, USA, Japan, China, Taiwan, Egypt and back in New Zealand.
 
On his return to Australia in 1999, Gerry took up the position on Manager, South East Waste Board in South Eastern NSW. This role was later transferred to a NSW Government agency. In both these roles he was responsible for the development of numerous regional and local waste strategies in the region.
 
Gerry developed the highly successful City to Soil community engagement strategy, collecting clean organic waste and reconnecting the urban community with the farmer as their food producer. groundswellproject.blogspot.com
 
This collection system developed a simple new compost process, with little mechanical input, for use in remote locations and also in disaster management. The process has been used to process weeds, manure and carcasses on farms into a high-quality compost input.
 
Gerry was a member of the NSW Government Organics Round Table, establishing policy on composting and reuse and contributing to the National Compost Standard AS 4454. He was also a contributing author to Professor Janis Birkeland’s book Positive Development. www.ies.unsw.edu.au/sites/all/files/event_file_attachments/janis-birkeland-flyer.pdf
 
Gerry is a member of Australia’s National Strategic Phosphorus Advisory Group established by Dr. Dana Cordell and Professor Stuart White, University of Technology Sydney.
http://phosphorusfutures.net/national-strategic-phosphorus-advisory-group-nspag/
 
As a member of the International bio-char community, he has on-going engagement in the development of new technologies for the application of biochar as well as its potential for renewable energy. On this subject he was a contributing author to: Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781402090301
 
Over the past fifteen years Gerry has often been asked to speak on some or all of the above issues at conferences around the world. He has also been a guest lecturer at various educational institutions within Australia and overseas.

 Compost project in Samoa - Opportunity for Food Plant Solutions

An organics composting programme in Samoa is clearly showing that with the correct design community composting can take a leading role in healthy food production. Local groups using their own food waste and garden waste can create a first step to underpin community garden food production and community health. This compost process will fit readily into any of the Food Plant Solutions programs around the world.
 
The model designed and implemented by Canberra based Waste Recycling Environment Network (WREN), is intended as a model for use in smaller communities where size, scale and population determine the placement of the process. The SPICE compost process in use has no odour, requires no turning and takes only 10 weeks to produce a high-quality compost product.
 
The funding for this project came through the Recycle Organics project designed by the Centre for Clean Air Policy with funding from the Department of Environment and Climate Change, Canada (ECCC).
 
This community site has its own compost shed where nine 1.2 cubic metre boxes, lined in fine woven cane mats, sit side by side under protection from wind and rain. The box designed originally by Maye Bruce in the 1920s was used in the Dig for Victory Program in World War II Britian to grow food for a population under siege by Germany.
 
The boxes sit side by side and are based around the number of participants. They are intended to be individually filled on a weekly basis. The locally made SPICE compost inoculant enables the boxes to safely reach well beyond the pasteurisation temperature of 55 deg Celsius, without fear of spontaneous combustion. In many instances the temperature can be held for over a week, to produce a weed free, quality compost to be used later in the production of local food for the participating families.
 
The compost process is entirely scalable from several to hundreds of homes.  Initially 20 households have registered to bring their food waste to the existing site in covered buckets. Households are given a spray bottle of the compost inoculant to control any potential odours. 
 
Whenever supplies of food waste become too large for the given number of boxes the compost process can be easily expanded to a more traditional windrow system. This can be supplemented with grass and vine trimmings from local homes and public lands. The process is intended to expand to up to 100 homes at this site while seeking out other locations including the establishment of a larger site on public land at the local landfill
 
At the heart of this Samoa compost project is a potential training program which could be spread throughout the Pacific and around the world on the basis that the SPICE compost process can collect and compost without odour or turning and at any scale. As such it has enormous potential to build on the Food Plant Solutions work where more than 35,000 edible indigenous plants have been identified in many communities around the world. As such it provides not only the basis of a networkable Zero Waste program but is also a living model of a full circular economy. Its potential impact on Non-Communicable Diseases such as diabetes and other community health issues is also significant.