Mulching & Green Waste Removal Across the Shoalhaven

After an east coast low, the mess is the job

Anyone who has watched a southerly come up the coast past Jervis Bay knows what the next morning looks like: spotted gum limbs across the lawn, blackbutt bark and branches banked up against the fence, and a nature strip pile that grows every time someone else in the street gets to work. Storm events have brought down trees and powerlines right across the Shoalhaven, with gusts near 100km/h recorded at Nowra. Cutting the tree up is the visible half of the work. Getting several cubic metres of green waste off a Berry, Worrigee or Mollymook property is the half that drags on for weeks if nobody deals with it.

Two ways this goes

Chipped on site. A chipper on the truck turns limbs into mulch within metres of where they fell. You keep the mulch for garden beds and around trees, or the crew loads it out. Least cartage, least cost, best outcome for coastal sand.

Loaded and carted. Everything goes on the truck and off to a Council depot. This is the call for large volumes, palm material, diseased wood, or weedy species where you do not want seed spread through your own garden.

Most Shoalhaven jobs are a mix. The decision gets made on site with you, not assumed.

What Council does with it

Shoalhaven City Council runs recycling and waste depots across the LGA, including West Nowra, Ulladulla, Huskisson and Berry. Some of the smaller village depots have had their hours and operations change over the years, so check Council's depot pages for current opening times rather than assuming.

Garden waste taken to those depots is shredded and pasteurised into shredded garden organics — a mulch-like product Council then makes available to residents free of charge from its depots. Availability depends on what has come in, and Council publishes a weekly update on which depots have it. You can load it yourself, or at weighbridge depots have staff load your trailer for a small fee. Worth knowing if you are re-mulching a big garden.

Dropping green waste off is not free, though. Gate fees apply, and they are a real line item in any removal or clean-up price. Council publishes current depot disposal costs, and after some declared storm and flood events Council has offered concessions on disposal — always worth confirming with Council on 1300 293 111 at the time rather than assuming it applies.

What does not belong in the chipper

Being straight about limits saves arguments later:

• Palm trunks and fronds are fibrous and water-heavy. They wreck chipper knives and they do not break down like woodchip. They get carted, not chipped — see palm removal.
• Treated pine, painted timber, fencing and construction waste are not green waste and are charged as a different waste stream.
• Weedy species with viable fruit or seed, such as cocos palm, are better removed from site than spread through your beds as mulch.
• Soil, rock and stumps are separate again. Ground stump chip is a different product to woodchip and is best used away from garden beds you plan to plant into straight away.

Using the mulch well on South Coast soils

Fresh eucalypt chip is coarse and takes time to break down, which is exactly what you want on exposed coastal ground where fine mulch blows away in the first strong southerly. Spread it 50 to 75mm deep and keep it off the trunk collar of anything you value. On the heavier soils inland around Kangaroo Valley and behind Berry, keep it thinner so the ground still breathes.

Related services

Chipping and clean-up is bundled into most jobs — including emergency and storm damage tree work, tree lopping and land and block clearing. Full coverage list on the areas we cover page, and everything else on the home page.

Call (02) 4400 9336 to get a pile of green waste off your property — priced on what is actually there.