The Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate is to pilot a collection of food and garden organics to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and turn household scraps into compost.
Announcing the service, Minister for Transport and City Services, Chis Steel said the Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) pilot would run across the suburbs of Belconnen, Bruce, Cook and Macquarie.
“The FOGO service will enable Canberrans to take everyday action on climate change by removing valuable organics from landfill and helping to reduce waste emissions by up to 30 per cent,” Mr Steel said.
“A focus of the pilot will be to look at contamination rates, and how FOGO collection can be implemented successfully across a mix of single residential houses and multi-unit apartment dwellings, before we roll out the service to the rest of Canberra,” he said.
“As part of the pilot, green-lidded bins will change from garden waste only to FOGO bins.”
Mr Steel said participating households that did not already have a green waste bin would be provided with one free of charge to maximise the amount of waste diverted from landfill.
The Minister said the households would also be provided with a kitchen caddy and compostable liners to collect their food scraps.
“Waste collection for single-residential households in the pilot suburbs will change, with green FOGO bins collected weekly instead of fortnightly, and garbage bins collected fortnightly instead of weekly,” he said.
“Participating households will be contacted by way of letter and we will work closely with residents to support their transition to the FOGO service ahead of the pilot commencing later this year.”
Mr Steel said pilot suburbs had been selected based on their mix of single residential dwellings and multi-unit properties.
He said City Services planned to run the FOGO pilot until the collection service was rolled out to all Canberra households in 2023.
