Randwick City residents have sent more than 1,400 tonnes of additional food and organics waste to be composted instead of going to landfill since the new FOGO (Food Organics Garden Organics) kerbside waste collection service was introduced in March 2021.

This is a 70% increase on the amount of green waste collected in the green lid bin from March to May 2020, before the FOGO service was introduced. Accordingly, the amount of waste in red lid rubbish bins has been reduced by 28%, from a monthly average of 2,374 tonnes to 1,715, slashing the amount of garbage sent to landfill.

“I am so impressed by the ability of our residents to embrace a completely new way of handling their food waste and how successful their efforts have been,” stated Randwick Mayor Danny Said.

“To put it in perspective, the Big Merino in Goulburn weighs 97 tonnes. Our residents, in just three months, have prevented the weight equivalent of 14 Big Merino statues from ending up in landfill. That is a tremendous effort. All that waste is now being composted and will be used to improve the soil quality of parks, sports fields and farmland.

“What’s more, residents have understood what can and can’t go in the green lid FOGO bins and kept the contamination rate to just 1.5%. In the FOGO processing industry anything below 3% is worthy of applause. I think this shows just how passionate and dedicated our people are to reducing their environmental impact so that we have something of value to hand on to our children.”

From January to March 2021, a total of 112,778 waste, recycling and FOGO bins and 60,000 kitchen caddies with compostable liners were delivered to residents to assist them in their FOGO journey. This month, a further 60,000 packs of compostable FOGO caddy liner bags were delivered to households.

Should residents run out of caddy liner bags between deliveries, they can be requested online and delivered to their homes.