RECYCLING has taken on a new roll out Longerenong way.
Not only do toilet paper inserts get a second life, but they might unlock secrets about waste busters lurking deep below the soil.
It is a case of recycling above to understand how recycling works beneath it.
Some have dubbed it toilet technology, but for Bernard Noonan, a soil health officer from DPI Horsham, it is very serious business.
Mr Noonan, said the research was trying to see how much biological activity was going on in different parts of a paddock and under different inputs.
Soils are a web of tiny bugs and bacteria that feed off decaying plants and each other and increase the nutrients that plants feed on.
One major indication of this activity is the breakdown of stubble, or cellulose.
"Cardboard was the closest thing we could find to stubble," Mr Noonan said.
So, four weeks ago, groups of humble toilet roll inserts were poked into eight randomly selected sites across two paddocks at Longerenong, near Horsham.
Both paddocks have been no-till cropped for four years, with one given extra treatments aimed at boosting soil biology and plant growth.
So far, only one of the eight sites has seen any decomposition, with nearly 70 per cent of the roll gone at a spot in the extra inputs paddock.
Mr Noonan said three more rolls at each site would be monitored for months.
Early results suggesting 5m wide hot-spots of biological activity, seem to have opened up a can of worms.
"It says to me we don't understand the spread of a population of bacteria and level or spread of biological activity," he said.
Which is understandable considering biologists worldwide have only identified about 5 per cent of what lives there now.
