Interview: practitioners on Composting & organics diversion — what they wish they knew earlier

Globally, organic waste accounts for approximately 44% of all municipal solid waste generated, yet the Asia-Pacific region diverts less than 15% of this material from landfills according to 2024 data from the United Nations Environment Programme. For practitioners working in composting and organics diversion across markets from Singapore to Sydney, the gap between reported diversion rates and actual environmental outcomes has become an increasingly urgent concern. In conversations with operations managers, sustainability consultants, and facility directors across the region, a consistent theme emerges: the industry's greatest challenge isn't technology or infrastructure—it's the persistent gap between what we measure and what actually matters for climate and soil outcomes.

"We spent two years optimizing our contamination tracking dashboard before realizing we were measuring the wrong things entirely," reflects Dr. Mei Lin Chen, a waste systems consultant who has advised municipal programs across Southeast Asia. "The data looked impressive in quarterly reports, but our compost quality hadn't improved, and our downstream rejection rates remained stubbornly high." Her experience captures a broader reckoning underway across Asia-Pacific's organics sector: the transition from measurement theater to meaningful metrics that drive genuine environmental outcomes.

Why It Matters

The urgency of effective organics diversion in Asia-Pacific cannot be overstated. The region generates over 500 million tonnes of organic waste annually, with the Asian Development Bank projecting this will increase by 40% by 2030 as urbanization accelerates. When organic matter decomposes in anaerobic landfill conditions, it releases methane—a greenhouse gas with 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year horizon. The IPCC's 2024 assessment identified improved organic waste management as one of the highest-impact, lowest-cost climate interventions available to developing economies.

In 2024, China processed approximately 85 million tonnes of food waste through formal composting and anaerobic digestion facilities, representing a 23% increase from 2022. South Korea's mandatory food waste separation program, now in its second decade, achieved a 95% diversion rate with strict contamination controls. Japan's biomass utilization strategy has expanded industrial composting capacity by 18% since 2023. Yet practitioners consistently report that headline diversion figures mask significant variability in output quality, process efficiency, and actual carbon benefit.

The economic stakes are substantial. The Asia-Pacific organic waste management market exceeded USD 42 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 68 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. However, facility operators report that 25-40% of incoming feedstock across the region fails to meet quality specifications, driving processing costs up and undermining the commercial viability of compost products. Without rigorous data quality and standards alignment, the sector risks building expensive infrastructure that delivers disappointing environmental returns.

Key Concepts

Composting refers to the controlled aerobic decomposition of organic materials by microorganisms, producing a stable, humus-like material that improves soil structure, water retention, and nutrient availability. Industrial-scale composting operations in Asia-Pacific typically employ windrow, aerated static pile, or in-vessel systems, with processing times ranging from 8-16 weeks depending on technology and climate conditions.

Organics diversion encompasses all strategies that redirect biodegradable materials—including food scraps, garden waste, agricultural residues, and certified compostable packaging—away from landfill or incineration toward recovery pathways. Effective diversion programs require source separation infrastructure, collection logistics, and end-market development for processed materials.

Contamination in organics processing refers to non-compostable materials that enter the organic waste stream, including conventional plastics, glass, metals, and non-certified packaging. Contamination rates above 2-5% significantly degrade compost quality and can render entire batches unmarketable. Practitioners emphasize that contamination measurement protocols vary widely across the region, making benchmarking difficult.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) provides a systematic framework for evaluating the environmental impacts of organics management pathways from collection through end-use. Rigorous LCA requires accurate data on transportation emissions, processing energy consumption, methane capture efficiency, carbon sequestration in finished compost, and avoided impacts from displaced fertilizers or landfill emissions.

Zero waste represents a systems-level goal of eliminating waste through redesign, reduction, reuse, and recycling, with organics diversion typically representing 40-60% of the pathway to zero landfill. Practitioners caution that zero waste claims often conflate diversion from landfill with genuine elimination of environmental harm.

OPEX (Operational Expenditure) encompasses ongoing costs for facility operation, including labor, energy, maintenance, and consumables. For composting operations, OPEX typically represents 60-75% of total cost structure, with contamination-related screening and rejection significantly impacting unit economics.

Waste audits involve systematic characterization of waste streams to determine composition, contamination levels, and diversion potential. Standardized audit protocols enable benchmarking, but practitioners report significant variation in methodology, sample sizes, and reporting practices across Asia-Pacific jurisdictions.

What's Working and What Isn't

What's Working

Mandatory source separation with enforcement mechanisms has delivered measurable improvements in contamination rates across multiple Asian markets. Taiwan's four-bin system, enforced through bag tracking and penalty systems, has reduced organics contamination to under 3% in Taipei—a figure that practitioners cite as the benchmark for Asia-Pacific. "When separation is voluntary, you get 15-25% contamination. When it's mandatory with real consequences, you get under 5%," notes James Wong, operations director at a major Singapore processing facility.

Technology-enabled feedstock monitoring is transforming quality control at progressive facilities. Computer vision systems deployed at intake points in South Korea and Japan now identify and flag contaminated loads before they enter processing, reducing downstream quality issues and enabling real-time feedback to collection crews. Facilities using these systems report 30-40% reductions in rejection rates within the first year of deployment.

Integrated regional processing networks are achieving economies of scale while maintaining feedstock quality. The Greater Sydney organics processing consortium, which processes over 200,000 tonnes annually across five coordinated facilities, has demonstrated that shared quality standards and centralized data systems can reduce per-tonne processing costs by 15-20% compared to fragmented municipal operations.

What Isn't Working

Inconsistent contamination measurement standards undermine meaningful comparison across programs and facilities. A practitioner who has audited facilities across ASEAN reports finding at least seven different contamination measurement protocols in use, with sample sizes ranging from 50kg to 500kg and frequency varying from weekly to quarterly. "You can't improve what you can't measure consistently," she observes. "And right now, we're comparing apples to oranges across the region."

Carbon accounting without verification has enabled widespread greenwashing in organics programs. Multiple practitioners describe encountering municipal programs that claim carbon credits or emissions reductions based on theoretical models rather than measured outcomes. "I've seen facilities claim methane capture rates of 85% when their actual systems were operating at 50% efficiency," reports an environmental engineer who conducts third-party audits. "The gap between claimed and actual climate benefit is often 30-50%."

Compostable packaging confusion continues to plague collection systems across Asia-Pacific. Despite certification schemes like AS 4736 in Australia and S MARK in Japan, practitioners report that consumers cannot reliably distinguish certified compostable packaging from conventional plastics. One facility director estimates that 40% of the "compostable" packaging arriving at his facility fails to break down within normal processing windows, requiring manual screening and disposal.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Veolia Environment operates organics processing facilities across Australia, Japan, and Singapore, processing over 2 million tonnes of organic waste annually in the Asia-Pacific region. Their integrated approach combines collection, processing, and end-market development.

SUEZ Asia manages large-scale composting and anaerobic digestion operations in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Australia. Their CIRSEE research center has developed proprietary contamination detection technologies deployed across regional facilities.

Clean Harbors Environmental (Taiwan) operates Taiwan's largest food waste processing network, serving over 8 million residents through municipal contracts and processing approximately 500,000 tonnes annually.

Beijing Environment Sanitation Engineering Group is China's leading organic waste processor, operating over 40 facilities nationally with combined capacity exceeding 15 million tonnes per year and pioneering integration of composting with biogas production.

Cleanaway Waste Management is Australia's largest waste services company, operating 12 organics processing facilities and investing heavily in contamination detection and compost quality certification systems.

Emerging Startups

Lil' Alchemy (Singapore) has developed compact, containerized composting systems designed for high-density urban environments, with installations across Singapore, Hong Kong, and Jakarta hotel and commercial properties.

Qing Tian (China) offers AI-powered waste sorting robotics specifically designed for organic waste streams, with systems deployed at over 30 processing facilities across mainland China.

Goterra (Australia) uses black soldier fly larvae to process organic waste into high-value protein and fertilizer products, operating commercial-scale facilities in Canberra and expanding across Southeast Asia.

Evoware (Indonesia) produces seaweed-based packaging certified as home-compostable, addressing the packaging contamination challenge at source with products now distributed across 12 Asia-Pacific markets.

Reciki (India) has developed a franchise model for decentralized community composting, operating over 500 micro-facilities across Indian cities with real-time monitoring and quality verification systems.

Key Investors & Funders

Asian Development Bank has committed over USD 2 billion to solid waste management improvements across developing Asia since 2020, with organic waste processing infrastructure a priority focus area.

Temasek Holdings has made strategic investments in circular economy ventures across Southeast Asia, including significant stakes in organics processing and compostable packaging companies.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures has invested in multiple next-generation organics processing technologies, including Goterra's insect-based bioconversion platform.

JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) provides technical assistance and concessional financing for municipal organics programs across Southeast Asia, including major projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Circulate Capital is an impact investor focused on plastic and organic waste solutions in South and Southeast Asia, managing over USD 150 million in deployed capital across the region.

Examples

Seoul Metropolitan Government's Smart Food Waste System implemented RFID-enabled collection bins across 3.2 million households, tracking disposal patterns at the individual unit level. Between 2023 and 2025, the system achieved a 28% reduction in total food waste generation through behavioral nudges and volume-based pricing. Contamination rates dropped from 8.2% to 2.1%, and the city's three major processing facilities report a 35% improvement in compost grade quality. The system generates over 500,000 data points daily, enabling continuous optimization of collection routes and processing schedules.

Yarra Valley Water's Waste-to-Energy and Compost Facility (Melbourne, Australia) processes 33,000 tonnes of source-separated food waste annually from 600,000 households. The anaerobic digestion component generates 1.2 MW of renewable electricity while producing 15,000 tonnes of AS 4454-certified compost. Third-party LCA verification confirms net negative emissions of 0.4 tonnes CO2e per tonne of feedstock processed. The facility has achieved 99.2% uptime since 2023 through predictive maintenance systems and maintains contamination below 1.5% through rigorous collection crew training.

Ho Chi Minh City's Pilot District Organics Program launched in 2024 across Districts 1 and 7, serving 150,000 residents with three-bin separation and dedicated organics collection. Despite initial contamination rates exceeding 20%, intensive community engagement and feedback systems reduced contamination to 7% within eight months. The program diverts approximately 25 tonnes of organic waste daily to a new aerobic composting facility, with finished compost meeting Vietnamese agricultural standards distributed to peri-urban farms. Cost per tonne processed is currently 40% higher than landfill disposal but projected to reach parity by 2027 as volumes scale.

Action Checklist

• Conduct baseline waste audits using standardized protocols (minimum 200kg samples, quarterly frequency) to establish accurate contamination and composition data before implementing new programs
• Implement real-time feedstock monitoring at facility intake points to enable immediate feedback to collection crews and prevent contaminated loads from entering processing
• Adopt recognized certification standards for finished compost (AS 4454, Chinese NY 525, or equivalent regional standards) and maintain third-party verification
• Develop data-sharing agreements across municipal and private operators to enable regional benchmarking and identify best practices
• Invest in community education campaigns that specifically address compostable packaging confusion with visual guides and local examples
• Establish partnerships with agricultural end-users to ensure stable demand for quality compost and provide feedback on product performance
• Commission independent LCA studies using measured (not modeled) emissions data to verify actual climate benefits and identify optimization opportunities
• Implement volume-based pricing or other behavioral incentives to reduce organic waste generation at source, not just diversion
• Create contamination penalty and reward systems for collection contractors based on delivered feedstock quality
• Join or establish regional practitioner networks to share operational data, troubleshoot common challenges, and advocate for consistent standards

FAQ

Q: What contamination rate is achievable for municipal organics collection programs in Asia-Pacific? A: Based on practitioner experience across the region, programs with mandatory separation and enforcement mechanisms consistently achieve contamination rates below 5%, with best-in-class programs in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan reaching 2-3%. Voluntary programs typically see 15-25% contamination. The key variables are enforcement mechanisms, community education intensity, and collection system design. Achieving low contamination requires sustained investment over 2-3 years, not just initial program launch.

Q: How should facilities balance processing cost against compost quality standards? A: Practitioners emphasize that under-investing in contamination removal creates false economies—facilities that accept higher contamination to reduce screening costs often produce unmarketable compost and face higher disposal costs for rejected material. The recommended approach is to invest in upstream quality control (collection training, intake monitoring) and establish minimum quality thresholds that align with agricultural market requirements. Facilities meeting recognized standards typically achieve 15-25% price premiums for their compost products.

Q: What metrics best predict actual climate benefit from organics diversion programs? A: Leading practitioners have moved beyond simple diversion tonnage to focus on verified outcomes including: methane capture efficiency (measured, not modeled); energy balance of processing operations; carbon content of finished compost; displacement factors for avoided fertilizer use; and actual application rates of compost to agricultural land. Programs that track only diversion tonnage often overstate climate benefits by 30-50% compared to full life cycle accounting.

Q: How can smaller municipalities develop organics programs without large capital investment? A: Regional consortium models, where multiple municipalities share processing infrastructure and quality standards, have proven effective across Australia and Japan. Decentralized models using smaller-scale technology (containerized composting, community facilities) can also achieve viable unit economics at lower volumes. Key success factors include aggregating collection logistics, sharing technical expertise, and developing common end-markets for finished compost.

Q: What role should certified compostable packaging play in organics diversion strategies? A: Practitioners express significant caution about compostable packaging, noting persistent consumer confusion and variable performance in industrial composting conditions. The consensus recommendation is to focus organics programs on food scraps and garden waste while treating compostable packaging as a secondary stream requiring additional verification. Facilities should maintain clear acceptance criteria aligned with their processing conditions (temperature, residence time) and reject packaging that fails to meet certified standards.

Sources

• United Nations Environment Programme. "Global Waste Management Outlook 2024." UNEP, 2024.
• Asian Development Bank. "Solid Waste Management in the Pacific: Improving Organic Waste Diversion." ADB, 2024.
• Grand View Research. "Asia Pacific Organic Waste Management Market Size Report, 2024-2030." Grand View Research, 2024.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Climate Change 2024: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 8: Urban Systems." IPCC, 2024.
• Standards Australia. "AS 4454-2012: Composts, Soil Conditioners and Mulches." Standards Australia, 2012 (reconfirmed 2022).
• Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea. "National Food Waste Reduction and Recycling Status Report 2024." MOE Korea, 2024.
• Chen, M.L. and Wong, J. "Contamination Benchmarking in Asia-Pacific Organics Processing: A Multi-Facility Analysis." Waste Management & Research, vol. 42, no. 3, 2024, pp. 245-261.