Media release
Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne & Councillor Mat Howard
Inner West Council has this week further strengthened our food recycling service by providing a free, opt-in weekly red bin collection for residents who need more support.
Registrations for the new service opened on Monday, March 18 and the service has commenced this week.
For the first 3 weeks of registration, priority will be given to residents with the most need.
During this period households with small children in nappies, residents with medical conditions or disability as well as large households with 5 or more residents will be able to register.
From 8 April, other residents not listed in the categories above will be able to register for the opt-in weekly service.
Residents can register for weekly collection by calling 9392 5000 Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 5pm. Information on the service can be found here www.innerwest.nsw.gov.au/fogo-support
There is also a range of other support still available to households needing help with transition to Food Recycling, including registering for a larger, 240L red bin and registering for extra red bin collections in the off-week when required.
Food recycling in the Inner West is proving to be a huge success with large-scale uptake across the community leading to very high tonnages of organic waste being recycled and the carbon emissions of the Inner West community being massively reduced.
Since the start of the new service in October we have diverted 7800 tonnes of organic waste to compost, instead of rotting in landfill. The methane and carbon emissions saved from this is the equivalent of having taken more than 13,426 cars off the road for one year.
This represents the single biggest contribution the Inner West community has ever made to reducing emissions and combating climate change.
Councillor Mat Howard, who has led the design and implementation of food recycling, said that this additional support will help lock-in this vital environmental reform.
“We committed in October to assessing the support being provided to households after the initial roll-out and to taking a pragmatic approach to ensure the ongoing success of food recycling in the Inner West,” Howard said.
“While the vast majority of households have successfully made the transition to food recycling and the carbon emissions reduction has exceeded our expectations, the roll-out has demonstrated that some residents are still finding the change challenging.
“That’s why we’ve introduced this additional support to help all local people to make this transition.”
Mayor Darcy Byrne said that providing more practical assistance to residents would help make food recycling an ongoing success.
“Our Inner West community is massively reducing our carbon emissions through food recycling and the vast majority of households have adapted to the change.”
“However, we know that it’s not one size fits all and we want to provide even more support to households that are finding the fortnightly red bin collection a challenge.
“This new free, opt-in weekly red bin collection will help parents with small children manage disposal of nappies as well as larger households with bigger volumes of waste.”
