Food recycling trial starts this week in Austinmer

HOUSEHOLDS in Austinmer will this week officially start Wollongong City Council’s three-month trial of Food Organics/Garden Organics or FOGO.

FOGO provides people the opportunity to place household waste such as raw and cooked meat, fruit and vegetable scraps and bread into their green-lidded bin along with their normal garden waste.

Around 1600 households within Austinmer, Cordeaux Heights and Warrawong have been invited to participate in the trial that officially starts on September 1 and will see the first collection of FOGO bins on Thursday September 5.

Council has delivered an information kit, kitchen caddies and compostable bin liners to the households who were invited to participate in the trial.

Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery encouraged those who were participating in the trial to embrace this opportunity to help reduce their environmental footprint and greenhouse gas emissions from our waste facilities.

“We’ve had Council and Remondis staff out and about in the three suburbs talking to residents and the feedback we’re receiving to this trial is overwhelmingly positive,’’ he said.

“People are keen to get behind this initiative and this is very exciting as it’s a proactive step towards reducing our landfill waste.’’

For Council waste management is a significant challenge for the City with close to 40,000 tonnes of residential waste going into the landfill site at Whyte’s Gully each year. The landfill site also contributes to 86 per cent of Council’s greenhouse gas emissions.

During the FOGO trial, the bins will be collected as normal – but the content of these green-lidded bins will undergo a tunnel composting process, producing a nutrient-rich recycled compost.

“I’d like to emphasise there will be no changes to bin collection days or frequencies for anyone in our City – including those participating in the trial,’’ Cr Bradbery said.

“That said, if you’re not in the trial please don’t add FOGO content to your green bin. The process for treating garden and FOGO waste is very different and we need to make sure we get it right.’’

Council is running the FOGO trial for three months to explore the practical logistics of FOGO in a City that’s home to 216,000 people.

The trial is in addition to a range of programs Council already offers including compost and Bokashi bin education workshops, the Community Recycling Centre at the Wollongong Waste and Resource Recovery Park and the On-Call Household Cleanup Service.