FOGO receival centre ready for city’s waste

IN less than five months, the City of Ballarat will begin its food organics and garden organics (FOGO) and glass recycling kerbside collections.

From Monday 3 November, FOGO will be collected fortnightly in a green lidded wheelie bin. Each home will be given a kitchen caddie to collect their food waste, before it goes in the bin. Those currently without a green lidded bin will receive one.

Glass recycling will be collected monthly in a 140-litre purple lidded wheelie bin, replacing the Pass on Glass process.

City of Ballarat director of infrastructure and environment Bridget Wetherall and mayor Cr Tracey Hargreaves visited the new FOGO receival centre at Scope Australia’s facility on Scotchmans Lead Road, Buninyong this week.

Household FOGO collected by waste trucks will be taken to the former gold mine and quarry site, before it goes on to be made into compost at Green Care Mulching, Balliang.

“Scope Australia is predominantly a logistics plant hire company in the civil construction space, but I saw a gap in the market for reuse and rehabilitation of sites, and reuse of products within the market,” said Scope Australia director John Kennedy.

“We’re going down the path here of recycling paddock rock, so crushing it here, and putting it back to the market. The same with soils, and what’s about to happen with the City of Ballarat’s green waste.

“We acquired this site three years ago and have put a lot of time in to get the site to what it is today.

“The main reason for the acquisition was to allow synergies between the likes of the City of Ballarat and Green Care Mulching… and really add value to the circular economy of the Ballarat region.

“The FOGO initiative not only strengthens our operational footprint in the region but shows we’re not waiting for change, we’re helping lead it.

“We’re proud to play an active role in shaping smarter, more sustainable waste solutions for the future.”

Accepted food organics will include fruit and vegetable scraps, raw and cooked meat and bones, citrus, leftovers, seafood, shellfish shells and eggshells.

Green Care Mulching CEO Russell Norton said these things can create “high-end compost” within months.

“We can get the [kitchen and garden waste to compost process] down to a three-month process,” he said.

“But we want people to do the right thing. Plastics, metals, rocks and other things are to be kept out of the green bin. Heavily contaminated material can end up in landfill, and we absolutely don’t want to do that.”

New bins will arrive in September and October, and the dishwasher-friendly caddies will come with compostable liners and information packs.

Accepted lightly rinsed glass items for the purple bins will include bottles, such as soft drink, juice, water, beer, wine, spirits, medicine, vitamin and supplements bottles, and jars such as pasta sauce, jam, pickles and coffee.

Visit ballarat.vic.gov.au/waste or call 5320 5500 to opt out of caddy delivery. The cost of all the new services will be included in the waste charges in the 2025/26 rates.