Households are being provided with a 240L green-lidded wheelie bin between 20^th of May and mid-June ahead of the fortnightly service commencing from the 1^st of July 2024. Your bin will include a home information kit.

Only start filling your new FOGO bin in the last week of June.

From 1^st July 2024, you will have a fortnightly collection (alternating schedule) of three kerbside bins:

• Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO)
  
• Landfill (General Waste)
• Recycling

If we all use the bins correctly, you will have less rubbish in your general waste bin, meaning less waste in landfill!

Even the smallest piece of waste in the wrong bin causes big problems when being processed, composted or recycled. Make sure you sort your waste the right way, go to the North West Resource Recovery & Recycling (NWRRR) website at www.nwrrr.com.au for the full A-Z guide (coming soon).

About 40% of all the general waste produced by our households is food and garden waste. When this waste is placed in the landfill bin and sent to landfill, it degrades and generates environmentally harmful greenhouse gases.

There is also a cost for waste that goes to landfill – by reducing the waste going to landfill we save you and the community money while creating a greener, safer future.

It starts in your kitchen and garden. You can use any container to collect your food scraps from the kitchen and tip them into the green lidded FOGO bin. If you have a garden or indoor plants, leaves, flowers and prunings, from these can also be placed into the FOGO bin. Ensure to maintain general hygiene by cleaning out your scraps container and washing your hands when handling.

The FOGO bin is then collected fortnightly. From there, FOGO waste is taken to a processing facility to begin the treatment and testing to create healthy composting that will be used around the local community and farms.

Simply collect food scraps from food preparation through to unused leftovers as well as garden waste that you may normally put in your landfill bin, and instead put them into the FOGO bin.

You can put food and organic garden waste in your FOGO bin. Food waste includes:

• vegetable peelings,
• fruit, including citrus,
• cooked food and leftovers,
• meat scraps and bones,
• seafood waste, and
• dairy.

Together with your food waste, your garden organics such as lawn clippings, weeds, veggie patch waste and small branches can also be added to the bin.

The home information kit delivered with the bin will include information to remind you of what goes in which bin.

PLEASE DO NOT put any plastics or biodegradable plastics, plastic bags, cling wrap, glass, tins and cans, foil, Tetrapaks, nappies, treated timber, gravel, rocks or building material into your FOGO bin.

Fireplace ash, pet waste and dead animals are also not suitable – these can go in the landfill bin.

Separate food waste from containers so only food waste goes in FOGO. If the container is recyclable, then give it a rinse and it can go into the recycling bin.

Great! You will find the FOGO service can process a larger amount of garden organics and ‘harder to compost items’ such as: dairy, meat, bones, bread, grains and citrus. This means you can use it alongside your home composting or chicken food.

We have chosen not to provide caddies to simplify the service, reduce cost to households and provide a choice in what works for you. This limits the resources needed to operate the service.

Use items you already have to collect your kitchen scraps like an old tupperware or ice-cream container or bucket.  This way you choose what works for your household, lifestyle and kitchen space.

NO bin liners can be used to prevent contamination. Instead, line your container with paper towel or newspaper to prevent mess or give it a quick rinse out and water the garden with the wash water.

It’s no lie that waste will smell at times, just like your landfill bin may do now. Below are tips that you can use to reduce this:

• Keep your bin in the shade if possible and always keep the lid shut
• Layer your food waste with garden waste such as lawn clippings and leaf litter or cardboard/waste paper
• Rinse you bin out regularly and let it dry completely
• Freeze fish and meat waste, and put in your FOGO bin the morning of collection
• Use a sprinkling of bicarbonate soda to deodorise your bin or caddy
• Offer a helping hand to anyone in the community, such as an elderly neighbour, who may struggle to implement this 

The FOGO bin, landfill and recycling bins, will be collected fortnightly on an alternating schedule. 

Your local schedule will be available in early June, on this page.

The fortnightly collection schedule helps keep costs down which means no significant increase in collection fees.

The fortnightly collection schedule has proven successful in Councils across Tasmania already providing FOGO. Residents of Latrobe Council have had fortnightly waste collections for more than 20 years without any significant issues and Central Coast residents changed to this system 5 years ago.

We understand moving to fortnightly waste collection can feel like a big change for some, but we are here to help everyone manage.

You cannot opt out if you live within the urban collection area. This initiative is going to be delivered to 38,000 households across the North West of Tasmania as part of the current waste collection service.

Charges will be set by each Council across the North West and provided in the budget papers. The Councils have worked together to create the best value for the bin collection service. For most Councils the cost will be minimised with:

• Changing to a fortnightly collection;
• Reduced processing costs compared to landfill; and
• No state levy applicable to the material in this bin saving over $45/tonne from the service start day compared to landfilling.

The FOGO process provides a more cost effective service than landfill, which in turn lowers costs for rate payers in the community. It also provides an opportunity to assess how much waste we produce and where we can reduce this by changing our buying habits.

Together, across the North West Coast, we expect to save around 7,500 tonnes to landfill and more than $340,000 in waste levy fees in the first year. This will increase to more than $525,000 by 2026.

Nappy, animal and medical waste remain in the landfill bin. Under health and safety laws, we are unable to process these items in the FOGO service.

Yes. Multi-unit dwellings within the urban collection area will receive a FOGO bin.

Yes, all properties within the urban waste collection zone will receive a FOGO bin, regardless of ownership.

At this stage we are focused on rolling the service out to households, however Council may introduce the service to businesses based on demand. If you are interested in a possible future service, please register your interest at hello@nwrrr.com.au using the subject line “Commercial FOGO Interest”.

FOGO is one simple thing you can do with your waste that will make a big difference for the environment. However, reducing food waste in the first place is crucial. A lot of energy, water, financial and natural resources go into the production of the food we buy and what we waste. Reducing your food waste in the first place will not only help the environment but also save you money. Here are more ways to reduce food waste:

• Make a list – Check your fridge and pantry supplies, make a list before shopping and stick to it.
• Manage your supplies – check use by dates to ensure you don’t let food spoil simply by being overlooked
• Plan ahead – Plan meals and what to do with leftovers – like turning it into tomorrow’s lunch or freezing it to use later on.
• Check out resources online for ideas on how to get the most from food in season and save money while eating it at its freshest. There are many websites that can provide tips to get better value and reduce food waste. Google “avoid food waste” and browse on.

Within the plant making the compost there will be six new jobs created. However, the facility also supports the many food processors in the North West that need to meet sustainability targets to keep their retailers commitments and the farms that supply produce to them; which supports more than 1,000 jobs in the region.