From Kitchen Scraps to Compost Gold: The Gosford Woman Turning Waste Into a Central Coast Business

Emma Bartlett started with 12 restaurant clients, a second-hand truck, and a lease on a modest shed off Somersby Industrial Drive. Eighteen months later, Coastline Compost Co. collects organic waste from more than 80 hospitality venues across the Central Coast — including several along the Gosford waterfront strip and up through Terrigal — and converts it into premium compost sold back to local market gardens and hobby farms. Last financial year, the business turned over just under $340,000.

The timing is deliberate. Across Australia, the conversation around food waste has sharpened considerably in 2026, driven partly by rising landfill levies and a growing body of research on methane emissions from organic matter dumped in tip-fill. In New South Wales, the current landfill levy for metropolitan areas sits at $81.30 per tonne — a cost that rolls downhill onto hospitality operators already squeezed by energy prices and wage increases. Bartlett identified the pain point early and built a service that saves her clients money while generating a product that sells.

"We're not a charity, we're a business," Bartlett told The Daily Central Coast during a site visit to the Somersby facility earlier this week. "But the numbers only work if the whole loop is closed — the farms need the compost, the restaurants need the pickup, and the price has to be right for everyone."

How the Loop Closes on the Coast

The mechanics are straightforward. Coastline Compost Co. operates three collection runs weekly across the Central Coast, using a route that covers venues in Erina, Gosford CBD, Wyoming, and up the Pacific Highway corridor to Tuggerah. Food scraps — vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds, bread offcuts — are transported to Somersby, where they're blended with horse manure sourced from two equestrian properties near Kulnura and left to hot-compost for a minimum of 90 days. The finished product, bagged under the Coastline label, retails at $18.50 for a 25-litre bag and is currently stocked at the Erina Fair farmers' market pop-up stall every Saturday morning, as well as at Gosford Garden Supplies on Mann Street.

Three of the region's working market gardens — including one operating on leased land near Peats Ridge Road — now buy Coastline compost in bulk at $9 per 25 litres, locking in supply through quarterly contracts. Bartlett says she has a waitlist of four additional farms wanting to come on as buyers, but production volume is the current constraint. She's applied for a $75,000 grant through the NSW Government's Organics Infrastructure Fund, with a decision expected by September 2026, which would fund a second turning machine and double throughput capacity.

Why Local Investors Are Paying Attention

The Central Coast Council's own waste data tells part of the story. The region's households and businesses generated approximately 47,000 tonnes of organic waste in the 2024-25 financial year, the vast majority of which went to landfill. Commercial food waste alone — from restaurants, cafes, and food manufacturers — accounted for an estimated 8,200 tonnes of that figure, according to the council's waste strategy documents published in March 2025.

Bartlett isn't the only operator working in this space, but she appears to be the first on the Central Coast to have built a genuinely closed regional loop rather than exporting collected organics to processors in Sydney's west. That distinction matters to local restaurateurs, several of whom cited the regional provenance of the service as a factor in signing on.

The business currently employs three part-time staff — two on collection runs and one managing the Somersby site — with Bartlett covering operations and sales herself. She says she'll need to hire a full-time operations manager if the grant comes through and production scales as planned.

For Central Coast businesses looking to cut their own landfill levy costs, Coastline Compost Co. is currently quoting new clients for collection contracts starting in August. Bartlett is holding an open day at the Somersby facility on Saturday 19 July, open to restaurant operators, farm owners, and anyone curious about how the business actually runs. Details are on the company's website and through the Gosford Business Chamber's July events listing.