Combining Forces to Decode Compost
Sustainable Taranaki’s Green Loop project team is now underway with Massey University collaborators on a research project that aims to understand whether a localised, community-scale composting operation can safely and effectively recycle commercial food waste streams, with a focus on cooked and processed (from-the-plate food) left-overs.
Green Loop’s trial will test whether bokashi fermentation, followed by the Johnson-Su style processing method, can turn this waste stream into biologically rich compost that is well-suited and scalable for agriculture and horticulture within the region. Currently, this organic waste material is being shipped 200-300km for landfill or biogas processing.
The project is applying portable environmental DNA (eDNA) sequencing, Soil Food Web microscopy and ecological network analyses to study changes in microbial communities and their functional activity across key stages of composting, with growth trials using the composts planned to follow.
Thanks to funding from the Pivot Research-in-Action Award* round 2025, Prof Peter Lockhart, Dr Dragana Gagic, and Patricia McLenachan from Massey are able to bring their expertise in molecular biology and sequencing, environmental microbiology, biomathematics, microbial network modelling and functional inference to complement the expertise, ambition and action-orientation of Sustainable Taranaki Green Loop Project leads Mieke Verschoor, Sophie Walker, Joe Turton, Jermaine Stewart, Elric Aublant and Dr Nadja Caroline Gottfert.
Photo: The team at Green Loop’s Working Pilot Site during International Compost Awareness Week, Saturday 09 May 2026.
Find out more about the Green Loop project here.
*The Pivot Research-in-Action Award is co-funded by Bashford-Nicholls Trust and Massey University. The fund is now open for applications for 2027 funding allocations. Find out more about the Pivot Award here: www.massey.ac.nz/research/research-funding-and-scholarships/pivot-enabling-innovation-in-agriculture
