City of Wanneroo bins FOGO plans for garden organics alternative

THE City of Wanneroo has tossed out plans to introduce a food and garden organics bin next year, opting instead to bring in a third bin for garden organics only.

Councillors unanimously supported a staff recommendation to decline six tender submissions for the FOGO (food organics, garden organics) service and authorise staff to invite tenders for garden organics so it could implement the three bin system.

A December council report said the waste management industry would not be ready to provide the service to 71,500 households in the City by its July 2020 target date.

“No tenderer could commit to a formal date when licence amendments would be fully secured or an exact date of when their nominated facility would be available to receive FOGO material,” the report said.

“Tenderers appear to have underestimated the requirements of environmental licensing requirements for transfer and processing of FOGO waste.”

Deputy Mayor Frank Cvitan moved the recommendation, saying it was “sound on the basis that we are not ready for it”.

Cr Brett Treby said it highlighted an issue with regulatory reform that did not pay attention to the market.

“I’m not sure that the market is mature enough at the moment to respond to a tender such as this,” he said.

Cr Treby said he supported going to a third bin and over time the City could migrate from a garden organics bin service to one that collected food organics as well.

The report said the tender responses did not meet value for money assessment criteria either, with costs higher than initially indicated through expressions of interest in January 2019.

A business case, adopted by the council in July, suggested the City would benefit if the processing facility was located within its boundaries.

The proposed three bin system will include a yellow lid recycling bin, a bright green garden organics bin and a red lid bin for general waste that would either go to the resource recovery facility or landfill.