Food Composting Coming To New South Wales

Residents of Sydney’s Inner West have grown accustomed to the weekly collection of food scraps, after the Inner West Council last year followed in the footsteps of other councils in the East and West. Now, the entirety of New South Wales is set to have food composting by July 2030.

As the Protection of the Environment Legislation Amendment (FOGO Recycling) Bill 2024 was read before the Legislative Council on 21 November, environment minister Penny Sharpe emphasised the urgency of reducing the rate at which Sydney produces rubbish.

“There is no beating about the bush – Greater Sydney is running out of landfill. Our recycling rates have stagnated at 2016 levels,” Sharpe said.

Sydney is on track to use up all its landfill space by 2030, which may force Sydneysiders to bear the cost of having their rubbish transported to the regions.

Sharpe stated that the collection of food waste could divert 950,000 tonnes from landfill annually.

Although food composting has garnered in-principle support from the Coalition and the Greens, the plan has not been without opposition. Local Government NSW, the peak body representing local councils in the state, made a submission to the Environment Protection Authority opposing a mandate on how frequently bins should be collected, and opposing fines for non-compliant councils.

Problems in the Inner West

To know how the scheme may affect residents across the state, and what pitfalls should be avoided, it is instructive to look to the Inner West Council, which introduced combined FOGO (Food Organics, Garden Organics) recycling in October 2023.

Residents were provided with a small inside food bin and an initial supply of compostable liners for it, as well as stickers indicating what can be composted. Residents are encouraged to place all food scraps in the kitchen bin or the outside bin, excluding liquids. Once full, the contents of the kitchen bin are transferred to the curbside green bin.

The council continues to supply residents with 120 litre and 240 litre bins, kitchen bench top bins, and compostable liners. Additionally, it offers tips on how to counter the scent that rotting food waste may produce, such as storing the bench top bin away from direct sunlight.

Issues of foul smells, flies and maggots infesting bins became prominent concerns and an initial lack of council response prompted a strong backlash.

Marrickville resident Lynn McIntosh gave ABC News a vivid description of the problem. “You open up the bin, the food smells, it’s unsightly, with maggots crawling out the top of the bin,” she remarked.

Teething issues came as red bin collection was reduced from a weekly to a fortnightly frequency. The council subsequently allowed residents to request that their general rubbish bins be collected weekly.

Talking on ABC Radio Sydney, Mayor Darcy Byrne discussed what the council had learned from the implementation of FOGO recycling.

“There are some households with small children and lots of nappies or larger households with lots of people in them and a greater amount of waste who are struggling with the fortnightly red bin collection,” he admitted.

Success despite setbacks

Despite the issues, the council has trumpeted the success of the scheme. It stated in July that, on average, seventeen percent more FOGO material was being collected per month than expected.

Food waste from the Inner West has largely been distributed for use by farmers in the state’s west. In July, however, the Inner West Council took delivery of its first truckload of compost created by the programme, which was put to use in Haberfield’s Richard Murden Reserve.

“The huge amounts of food waste that we’ve diverted from landfill shows how much the people of the Inner West have embraced our food recycling service,” Mayor Byrne said.

The environment minister argued that weekly collection across the state would prevent households from being “discouraged” to recycle food scraps due to the decomposition of food in the time prior to collection.

Councils will not be required to collect garden and food material in the same bin as the Inner West Council does, so long as food waste is collected weekly.

Other councils have introduced or begun trialling FOGO programmes, including the City of Sydney, the City of Randwick, Woollahra Municipal Council and Waverley Council. Penrith Council introduced FOGO recycling in 2009, the first of any metropolitan council in Australia to do so.