Where does the Fogo go? The challenge of recovering Sydney’s green waste – and how you can help

‘I cannot wait until this place is 100% Fogo’: Ash Turner at the Cleanaway centre in Sydney’s Eastern Creek where a shift in waste processing is under way. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Ash Turner sizes up a four-metre-high, 60-tonne mound of food waste and garden rubbish and points out the problematic interlopers amid the grass clippings, hedge trimmings, mango seeds, calla lilies and biodegradable bags full of food.

“So that’s a biodegradable bag … that’s not … that’s oversized,” he says, pointing to a tree stump that will be too big to be broken down by the various machines in the plant.