The City of Joondalup is currently rolling out its three-bin system for green waste only.
Camera IconThe City of Joondalup is currently rolling out its three-bin system for green waste only. Credit: Supplied/Martin Kennealey

No current facility for City of Joondalup to move to FOGO three-bin waste system

Tyler BrownJoondalup Times

WHILE the City of Joondalup is in the middle of its rollout of a new three-bin system, the State Government has released details of a different system it plans to implement.

Since January 21, the City has been making its way around its 60,000 residential properties to deliver a new 140L red-lid bin for general waste, and replace the old general waste bin lid with a new lime green one to then be used for green waste.

The $5.7 million project has been part-funded by the Better Bins program – a $20 million State Government initiative that provides funding to local governments to implement better practice kerbside waste collection.

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However, on Monday the State Government announced a different three-bin system that all Perth and Peel households will move to by 2025.

Under the Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) system, food scraps and garden organics will be separated from other waste and reused to create compost.

Under the City of Joondalup’s new system, only garden organics can go in the third bin, which is processed into compost.

This means that within the next six years, the City will need to change to the FOGO system, which has already been approved for rollout in the cities of Melville and Fremantle and the towns of Bassendean and East Fremantle this year.

The City of Bayswater is also working with the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council to investigate how they could roll out the FOGO system.

And the City of Stirling, which has had a three-bin system in place since 2015, considered a report yesterday and is waiting for more information from the Mindarie Regional Council (MRC) before rolling it out.

These council decisions follow a trial by the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council of 7000 households in 2017.

Joondalup Mayor Albert Jacob said the City had considered the implementation of the FOGO system as part of its three-bin rollout.

“However, there are currently no available FOGO processing plants capable of taking the quantity of FOGO waste that would be generated by a local government the size of Joondalup, with 60,000 households,” he said.

“Following the release of the State’s new waste strategy, I will be writing to the Minister for Environment to explore ways by which the City could consider incorporating full FOGO for our green-lid bins, including whether there is any opportunity for the State Government to assist with the provision of a regional processing facility which could have the capacity to process Joondalup’s volume of organic waste.”

Currently, the City’s general waste, including food organics, is processed through the Resource Recovery Facility (RRF) in Neerabup to produce an organic soil-conditioning product for reuse commercially, and greens waste is taken to the transfer station in Landsdale and then sent to the Suez facility in North Bannister for processing.

“The MRC has initiated a project to investigate the feasibility of converting the RRF into a FOGO processing plant,” Mr Jacob said.

“If successful, and financially viable, this facility may be able to provide the processing capability to MRC members, including the City of Joondalup.”

The FOGO system is a key component of the State’s new strategy to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and ensure more household waste is recovered, reused and recycled.

Historically, WA has generated the highest volume of waste per capita in the nation, and has had among the lowest rates of waste recovery.

“By rolling out the three-bin system across all metropolitan local governments, we will ensure more value is recovered from household waste,” Premier Mark McGowan said.

“Many WA households have welcomed the system with open arms.”

He said the State Government would work with local governments to adopt the three-bin FOGO system and ensure it is rolled out successfully.

Targets outlined in the State’s waste strategy include a 20 per cent reduction in waste generation per capita and a 75 per cent rate of material recovery by 2030.

It also includes a commitment to use more than 25,000 tonnes of recycled construction and demolition waste as road base under the Roads to Reuse program.