I was at the local sand, soil and cement supplier the other day. It's the sort of business that supplies are purchased by the cubic metre, trucks and front end loaders are driving around and I'm trying not to get squashed in my little car with a trailer!

One of the bays of stuff caught my attention. It was full of chicken manure, virtually a small hill of it. Next to that one was cow manure, about the same size. Apart from the excitement of realisation what uses I could possibly put this to, I thought to myself that these were obviously by-products of industrial farming. It was almost incredible to see it first hand and realise that the factory that they'd come from was thinking that this stuff was a waste product. Wow, I was looking at the stuff as soil food and thinking about all the possibilities.

It got me thinking about how I dealt with “waste” on my own lot.

People don't really think much about waste until it can't be sent elsewhere. Unfortunately up my way there is no elsewhere and no garbage pick-up or sewerage services. If you don't have these, you have to have systems! The system is called a waste heirachy (I reckon I made that one up, but really probably read it somewhere) and nothing organic leaves the property.

It works like this:

The choicest scraps go to the dogs. Yeah, they're pretty happy, and it's a bit controversial, but they eat a predominantly vegetarian diet. Anyone who is concerned for their health shouldn't be as they usually live to around 16 – 17 years. The dogs waste goes to either the native birds who are onto them pretty quickly, the dung beetles, or the worms. The waste from the native birds obviously goes into the soil.

The scraps that the dogs don't want, go to the chickens. The chickens are happy with this arrangement and provide me with lots of chicken poo. Their run has has a deep litter system comprising large amounts of council mulch (which is other peoples green waste – collected, chipped and composted by the local council). The chickens turn the mulch over all day every day. After the chickens have provided nitrogen to the mulch it's then distributed by many wheelbarrows around the orchard and the chickens start again with a new load.

The scraps that the dogs and chooks reject go to the worms. I don't know whether the worms are happy with this arrangement, but I wouldn't put my arm into the worm farm for fear of never seeing it again! The system operates entirely on gravity, with the worm tea and vermicast filtering into about 80 metres of trenches in the soil which supports a lush herbage – all year. The wombats, wallabies and kangaroos feed on this (every night) and spread their poo back through the orchard – free of charge!

My black and grey water goes through the worm farm as well with the same result as above. This system can take as much as 1,800 litres per day which I'd never do.

Paper and cardboard are easy to dispose of. All paper that is blank on one side is reused for printing, some paper goes into the worm farm to supply the worms with extra carbon, and yet other paper is used for fire starters in the wood heater. Any ash is returned to the soil in the orchard thinly and over a large area as we have acidic soils favouring a fungal dominated environment and the trees won't tolerate a quick change in the soil ph.

This leaves plastic, glass and metal. With the exception of non recyclable plastic all this can be taken down to the waste transfer station free of charge (I usually combine this trip with other errands). It's far from perfect as I know that often the councils recycling process is not what it seems and the product may end up in landfill. I'm open to suggestions anyone?

Still, it all comes back to chook poo though and I can't help thinking about what a cubic metre or two of it (or cow poo) would do spread thinly around the orchard!