FOGO pilot expanded to more unit households in Tuggeranong and Belconnen

Narly 1200 multi-unit households in Tuggeranong and Belconnen have been added to the Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) collection pilot.

The ACT Government says 772 households in Belconnen and 400 households in Tuggeranong will now be able to have their food scraps collected weekly.

City Services Minister Tara Cheyne said the addition of more multi-unit residents to the pilot would provide valuable insights and data for when FOGO is eventually rolled out across Canberra, given the proliferation of unit and townhouse developments in the ACT in recent years.

“Data collected will also provide insights to help improve waste management practices for multi-unit developments as a whole,” she said.

When announcing Budget funding for the pilot extension in June, Ms Cheyne said that the ACT’s housing mix had changed dramatically and continued to evolve.

“One of the challenges that we know we have with any waste stream is with our multi-unit developments, so we’re going to be expanding the FOGO pilot to another 1150 unit households to get a better understanding of what we need to be doing differently to make sure that FOGO is going to be working for every housing type in the ACT community,” she said.

Participating households will receive a kitchen caddy with compostable liner bags for food scraps, along with a light green lidded FOGO bin within their shared waste enclosures.

Regular bin collections will continue as usual within the expansion areas. ­

The government will notify participating households by letter and information sessions will be held over the coming weeks for residents and building managers on the correct use of FOGO within their buildings.

Ms Cheyne said food scraps made up about a third of items put into household rubbish bins in the ACT, equivalent to about 26,000 tonnes of food waste going to landfill each year.

“Since the implementation of the FOGO pilot through until June 2024, the initiative has diverted 3475 tonnes of food and garden waste from landfill and turned this material into valuable compost,” she said.

“This supports a circular economy within the ACT and reduces the amount of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come from our landfill.”

The FOGO pilot has been running since November 2021, providing a weekly collection of food scraps and garden waste for about 5300 households in the suburbs of Belconnen, Bruce, Cook and Macquarie, including 2250 units in various multi-unit developments.

A Canberra-wide service is waiting on the development of a composting facility at the Hume Resource Recovery Estate, which has been pushed back until 2026.

The FOGO facility and service was supposed to be up and running this year, but the government decided to delay the project after the 2022 Christmas fire at the Materials Resource Facility to focus on fast-tracking a new MRF.

Eventually, the FOGO facility will process 70,000 tonnes of compost a year.

At the end of last year, the government went to industry seeking options for a long-term FOGO solution for the Territory to own and run Hume, but it is open to private participation.

The government said then that it wanted to look at a range of technology options and solutions to divert FOGO from landfill rather than take up an option already in use elsewhere, saying the technology was constantly evolving and changing.

“We want to be at the forefront of innovation in this technology to ensure the new FOGO facility is fit-for-purpose and is future-proofed to serve the Canberra community for decades to come,” the spokesperson said.

A draft environmental impact statement was released on 29 January for consultation, which closed on 12 March.