Council will introduce a full food organics service from 2020, with all kitchen and food waste including meat and bones able to be disposed of in green garden bins. As part of the new service, garden bins will be picked up weekly and collection of general rubbish bins will move to fortnightly.
At its April meeting, Council decided to implement the full Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) service throughout the shire progressively over the next five years. A FOGO service allows all food waste including meat, bones and dairy products to be placed in garden bins and processed into compost.
The move to a full service follows a successful trial of a limited FOGO service from November 2018 which enabled residents to place fruit and vegetable waste including scraps, peelings, and whole fruit and vegetables into their garden bin.
The rollout of the new service will begin in January 2020 to areas of the shire which currently receive the garden bin service. As part of this first stage, anyone in the current garden bin pickup area who does not currently have a garden bin will receive one, so they can utilise the new service.
Mayor, Cr Janet Pearce said the limited trial had generated a lot of interest and feedback had been very positive. "The trial has been well supported, and residents told us they were keen to go to the next stage to a full food organics service," Cr Pearce said.
"We understand moving to fortnightly general rubbish collection is a big change for some residents, so we want to give them as much notice as possible.
"Reducing the amount of waste going to landfill is a key priority of Council, and rolling out a full food organics service will go a long way to help us achieve this, as well as reducing the shire's net carbon emissions."
Residents receiving the full FOGO service will receive a kitchen caddy to use to store their food waste and a roll of compostable caddy bin liners. The cost of providing the garbage service will increase by $7 per household per year to fund the annual supply of these compostable liners. This change is outlined as a new initiative in the 2019/20 draft budget which is open for community feedback until 28 May 2019. See mrsc.vic.gov.au/yoursay for details on how to provide a submission to the budget.
Delivery of caddies and liners and the rollout of garden bins to residents who require them in the areas to be serviced by the first full FOGO service will begin later this year.
Stage two in the 2020/21 financial year will see the expansion of the weekly FOGO and fortnightly
garbage service to include the additional townships of Bullengarook, Monegeetta, Tylden and Malmsbury.
Stage three (2023/24 financial year) will see implementation of a shire-wide universal FOGO service.
Investigation of potential for a commercial FOGO service to collect food organics from cafes, restaurants and other food businesses to further improve food waste diversion from landfill will be considered for inclusion in Council's next waste contract (2024/25 financial year).
Find out more about the rollout of the full food organics service.
