Students lead the way in waste-sorting

MORE than forty children from six primary schools have taken part in the City of Ballarat’s first Waste Super Sorter competition.

The educational initiative took place at the City Oval last month where teams sorted their waste into general household waste, mixed recycling, food organics and garden organics (FOGO) and glass.

Students planted seeds and learnt about worm farms for composting and the soft plastics collection pilot program.

“We hope our youth can lead the way and encourage everyone to get on board with becoming super sorters,” mayor Cr Tracey Hargreaves said.

“The better we sort our waste and the more we can recycle, the less waste that goes into our general household waste bin – which ends up at the Ballarat Regional Landfill at Smythesdale.

“The introduction of our food organics and garden organics – or FOGO – collection will help us recycle our food and garden waste into new products, like compost, while reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfill.”

A group of students from Caledonian Primary School scored the highest result and won a trip to Australian Paper Recovery in Melbourne, which sorts Ballarat’s mixed recycling.

The City of Ballarat is expected to introduce a fortnightly FOGO collection service and a monthly glass collection service in November.

Food organics are fruit and vegetable scraps, raw and cooked meat and bones, citrus, leftovers, seafood, shellfish shells and eggshells.

There will be no change to weekly household waste collection and fortnightly mixed recyclables collection.