The FOGO (Food Organics Garden Organics) Bill intends to mandate that households separate their organic waste for collection and require supermarkets to report their food donations. By 2030, we expect to see mandatory compost collection for most households and businesses in New South Wales.
There is an existing mandate, albeit broad and less ambitious, which was placed in 2021 as part of the NSW Government Waste Strategy 2041. According to EPA NSW, only 43 out of the 128 Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in NSW currently provide a FOGO service as of 2024. In Victoria, a few jurisdictions have trialled organics diversion initiatives since 2010 with varying degrees of success. The scattered nature of these earlier efforts has made these initiatives hard to implement and replicate. However, the waste landscape has started to change significantly in recent years.
The Circular Economy (Waste and Recycling) Act 2021 mandated the separation of organics and glass from the general waste and recycling streams, respectively. Importantly, the Act also established Recycling Victoria as a new statewide regulator that now provides strategic leadership, oversight and regulation of the waste and recycling sector. In broad terms, having a statewide approach will naturally facilitate economies of scale across the waste industry. Particularly for organics, having a stable, established, and well-funded framework promotes the growth of processing capacity, logistics and opportunities to utilise the final product. Implementing such a large-scale system provides better data and societal awareness, which encourages the sharing of experiences and improvements in waste sorting.
As of December 2024, there are still numerous challenges in Victoria regarding infrastructure, existing waste collection contracts, contamination and in broadening opportunities for the use of high-quality compost. However, we are beginning to see early signs that sustained government funding and initiatives, along with a statewide regulatory and institutional framework, are starting to show some positive results.
The first graph* to the right (Figure 1) has been extracted from the Recycling Victoria Data Hub and illustrates some of the early trends we are seeing regarding waste sorting across the state.
The graph shows that, despite a statewide population increase of roughly 17% between 2016 and 2023 (as per ABS data), the overall waste volume increased significantly less (10% in absolute terms) between 2016 and 2023. While recycling decreased slightly in recent years, we must also consider the introduction of glass-only collection in some jurisdictions. Most crucially, the volume of organic waste collected kerbside increased almost 70% during the same period, from about 390,000t to over 660,000t between 2016 and 2023. Taking the 2016 FOGO figure as a baseline, this increase equates to approximately 2,200 Olympic pools’ worth of additional organics volume from Victorian households that did not go to landfill!
The second graph (Figure 2), also sourced from Recycling Victoria Data Hub, illustrates the increased service cost of kerbside collection between 2016 and 2023. Considering this data, perhaps it is unsurprising that overall collection costs have increased. Interestingly, despite the aforementioned challenges with implementing the systems, we can see that FOGO collection costs have remained fairly stable, with a 30% increase between 2016 and 2023, compared to a 45% increase in general waste disposal costs and a 317% increase for recycling. In the coming years, we expect to see the costs of general waste collection increase significantly faster as our landfill capacity is pushed to its limits. As for recycling, we may see ongoing adjustments resulting from the recycling export ban implemented in 2021. Not only does FOGO have the lowest cost increase (as stated above), but it will likely remain comparatively much lower than general waste and recycling as FOGO implementation continues.
We are still in the early days of FOGO implementation, and there is a lot of work to do to ensure that organic materials flow efficiently throughout the economy, but these are some tangible and significant results. If we continue this trajectory, we will see new industries emerge with capabilities to create more intelligent systems for using our finite resources and improve the quality of life for us all.
In the waste sector, moving towards a circular approach is crucial due to the significant social, environmental, and financial costs of maintaining the current systems. Particularly for organics, it makes little sense to allow these materials to decompose in landfills while emitting harmful greenhouse gases when we can repurpose them to make high-quality compost for use in public facilities and agriculture.
It is pleasing to hear of good initiatives being implemented across the country, not only in terms of organics recycling but also in textiles, construction waste, glass, e-waste and others. It is also encouraging that both NSW and Victoria have now established regulatory frameworks for organics separation, and hopefully, all other jurisdictions will follow.
Our waste management team is well established in the urban development space, and we have first-hand experience assisting designers and other stakeholders to navigate the constant changes to waste services and systems across all states. Change can be hard, but it is often for the better!
* Please note, that the information shown by this graph is limited to households utilising Municipal waste collection services.
