This response is from Whitehorse Council in Victoria.

1. How long has the system been in the workplace?
   As you know we started with your 120L Bokashi Bins and you were collecting them every week at the start of 2007 for about 6 months. As it was no longer viable for your business we have since changed to organic collections for our worm farms. So I guess we have been collecting organics for around 2 years.
2. How many units do you have?
   We have 2 large collection bins in each kitchen - along with 2 smaller bench collection bins for tea bags etc.
3. How many staff?
   We have about 200 staff at the Civic Centre.
4. How do we deal with waste when the buckets are full?
   The volunteer for the week will empty those main bins at the end of the week and there is about 50L of organics to be taken to the worm farms. We currently have 4 worm farms; we started with 2 which were not enough to cope with the demand.
5. Is there any smell?
   The smell is dealt with by emptying the smaller bench bins every day into the larger bins and using the bokashi mixture to sprinkle on top of the food waste and also placing in the bottom of the bins when they get emptied. There have been no real smell issues at all.
6. Who is responsible for the maintenance (i.e. adding of Bokashi)?
   We currently have 8 volunteers that take it in turns to do the organics run each week. Their job involves emptying the bench top bins into the larger bins, adding bokashi if there are any smell issues and emptying the main bins into the worm farms (and of course checking the worms!)
7. How much Eco Bokashi do you go through per month/ year?
   As we only use a small amount of the bokashi we only buy a 3kg bag of bokashi mixture every 10-11 months.
8. Issues encountered along the way and general comments?
   The staff is really on board and the amount of organics found in the general waste has certainly decreased since starting the collection. The only drama at the moment is since we have swapped from the full bokashi collections we can no longer accept meat as the worms do not cope with that.

Kirsten Friend
Environmental Officer

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