From Hilltops Council – Patrick Fitzgerald

Composting. Household waste and disposing of it is one of the trickier issues that Councils must deal with.

Putting it in landfill sites is very quickly ineffective. A new policy in this area has been developed by the state government.

A new word for some is FOGO. It stands for Food Organics Garden Organics. These items of waste are very compostable and thus able to be recycled for effective future use.

The NSW Government has mandated FOGO collection services in all council areas by 2030.

The aim is to reduce landfill by 50%. Banning FOGO from landfill would divert 7 million tonnes of waste to composting and anaerobic digestion a year.

FOGO makes up over 40% of waste in bins. Councils that introduce FOGO services will also be able to claim carbon credits.

FOGO includes food waste, garden waste and a limited selection of items used to collect and transfer food waste (e.g. newspaper).

Currently in Hilltops we do not have a composting facility that could deal with what is produced in community households.

The two biggest barriers to a successful introduction of FOGO services are the lack of infrastructure and the lack of markets for FOGO products.

The way forward would be to develop our own composting facility. This could occur on a current landfill site with modifications.

We could also build into the tenders for FOGO collection the option for Hilltops Council to purchase a percentage of the resulting compost and thus partly de-risk those commercial contracts.

To assist our community in understanding these developments and opportunities the Hilltops Solutions Committee is running an information and discussion session on the potential for a domestic composting system for the region.

This will be held on Thursday 20th October in the Young Town Hall from 5:30pm.

If you are interested contact The Hilltops Solutions Committee on 0429 638 323 for more information.

Councillor Patrick FitzGerald