ORANGE councillor Russell Turner is disappointed in the standard of mulch on offer at the Resource Recovery Centre on Ophir Road and refuses to use it himself.
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Cr Turner said he was recently forced to stop buying the poor-quality mulch because it was uneven and coarse.
“It’s unsellable, I’ve even purchase mulch that had nails and large pieces of wood in it,” he said.
Cr Turner, who has 2.2 hectares of garden at his home, says he is now buying mulch from private companies and paying more than double the $18.55 a cubic metre council charge.
“It’s more expensive but it’s useable,” he said.
“I’ve seen other people arrive to pick up a trailer of mulch and leave with an empty trailer because the mulch is too coarse.”
Cr Turner said it was unfortunate the quality of the mulch had dropped because in previous years it had been a very good product.
“If council doesn’t do something soon it will lose its market,” he said.
Cr Glenn Taylor, who works in the gardening sector, says not only is the quality of the mulch a problem, its supply is not guaranteed.
“Sometimes there’s none left for the community to buy,” he said.
Cr Taylor says while the price of council mulch is reasonable, he too has been forced to pay more from private suppliers.
“I pay more to get better quality,” he said.
Council spokesman Nick Redmond says as well as the compost, which is produced at council’s Euchareena Road facility, for some years council has produced an organic chip material that is often used as garden mulch.
“The shredded material is also used by JR Richards to be added to their compost production cycle,” he said.
“The garden waste, tree prunings and other light timber which is brought to the Ophir Road facility by residents is stockpiled and then put through a shredder to produce this organic chip.”
Mr Redmond says the shredding work is done by a contractor, however, recently, in a period between contracts, JR Richards hired a new contractor to supply their mulch, but that contractor did not screen the shredded material to the usual standard.
“As a result there were much larger pieces of woody material than usual in the organic chip,” he said.
“This change in quality was pointed out to people who came to Ophir Road who wanted to buy the chip.”
Mr Redmond says there is currently a stockpile of this material at Ophir Road and when shredding begins again the correct quality will be produced.
tracey.prisk@fairfaxmedia.com.au