This month marks a year since the City of Stonnington added a food and green waste bin to its kerbside waste collection service.
Commonly known as FOGO (food organics, green organics) the new service is proving popular with nearly 13,000 households across Stonnington signed up to recycle their food scraps right.
Over the past 12 months the uptake of the service has resulted in more than 4,420 tonnes of food and green waste being diverted from landfill – a 20 per cent increase over what was previously a green waste only service.
City of Stonnington Mayor, Kate Hely is delighted to see so many households supporting the service and showing their commitment to reducing the amount of food waste going to landfill.
“It’s really pleasing to see so many people signing up to our FOGO service, but there’s still room to do more,” said Cr Hely.
“We would love to see more households sign up, and we’re particularly keen to see people living in apartments getting on board.
“It’s amazing to think that with a very small change to our recycling habits, we could be collecting and recycling almost all food and green waste.
“With 36 per cent of the content of the average garbage bin is food scraps. By simply putting those scraps into a FOGO bin we will keep a huge amount of reusable waste out of landfill.
“The FOGO we collect is turned into high quality compost used by Victorian farmers to grow the food that will end up back on our tables.
“By contrast, when food scraps end up in landfill that resource is lost and, even worse, as the waste breaks down it creates methane, a greenhouse gas harmful to the environment.
“Signing up for a FOGO bin, or a shared bin for those living in apartments, ensures this valuable resource is easily collected and turned into something useful.
“I encourage everyone to rethink food waste and together we can continue to increase the amount of food and green waste we put to good use,” said Cr Hely.
For residents who already have a FOGO bin (burgundy lid) you can start recycling food scraps today. And, to make collecting food scraps as convenient as possible, the City is providing free kitchen caddies and compostable liners, available from our customer service centres.
Signing up to the FOGO service is easy.
Households visit the Request a Bin page and sign up online.
Apartment residents, ask your Owners Corporation to complete an Apartment Food and Green Waste Application
