The Y Discovery Camps (YMCA)

Y Discovery Camps delivers immersive outdoor education experiences designed to help participants step away from everyday life and reconnect with nature. Across six unique camp locations throughout Victoria, the organisation offers a diverse range of environments and activities that encourage personal growth, resilience and connection.

At a busy 170-bed group accommodation and outdoor education facility, delivering immersive camp experiences for school groups, food service operations are significant in scale. With more than 18,000 campers annually and over 55,000 meals produced each year, managing organic waste efficiently had become a growing operational challenge, until the introduction of on-site composting solutions using Closed Loop machines helped transform waste management across the sites.

“My first exposure to the composting machines and Closed Loop was in 2015. The process from the first phone call with Closed Loop to the installation of the machine was seamless.

The installation of the unit CLO-20 was transformational for our operations, as a busy 170 bed group accommodation and catering facility. Our predominant market was school groups who came to the site for facilitated outdoor recreation and camp experiences. Our kitchen produces over 55,000 meals for our 18,000 campers per annum. The waste for the site was usually one full 3 m³ skip bin empty per week and we were in the process of getting a bigger bin before we were introduced the Closed Loop composter, which reduced the amount of waste to such a margin we cancelled the extra bin!

An additional benefit of the Closed Loop composting machine has been its integration into our camp programs, actively involving campers in the food waste process. Branded buckets are placed in the dining room, making it easy for campers to dispose of all food scraps. As part of the kitchen garden program, students then see the machine in action first-hand and assist in the distribution of the compost across our garden beds.

The after sales service and troubleshooting has been exceptional with over the phone assistance, often getting to the cause of our operational issues before a site visit is required.

The machine has been so successful that after 3 years with a CLO-20, we upgraded to a CLO-30! We also organised the installation of the machines across the YMCA camps so we now have 5 units across our camping network composting approximately 720kg of food waste each week.”

Greg Mason – Chief Operating Officer, The Y

Image: Closed Loop commercial composter being used on-site at Y Discovery Camps.