Blacktown Council to spend $1.38m on campaign for food waste bin changes

Sydney’s largest council is bracing itself for thousands of potential complaints from households as it prepares to shake up weekly red bin collection services with organic food waste bins.

Sydney’s largest council is bracing itself for thousands of potential complaints from households as it prepares to shake up weekly red bin collection services with organic food waste bins.

Blacktown Council is budgeting $1.38m and will allocate 16 staff members towards an implementation and communications campaign to deal with a torrent of predicted queries from households over the rollout of new food organic garden organics (FOGO) bins next year.

The climate-conscious food waste services will see big changes to the types of bins offered to Blacktown’s 100,000 households to enable the council to divert compostable waste from landfill.

The council is predicting it will receive a staggering 17,000 calls from residents specifically relating to the changes when it rolls out from August.

Household bin services will change as part of the FOGO rollout.

Instead of two standard sized red and yellow bins, the FOGO service will involve households receiving three bins including a 140 litre red-lidded general waste bin, a 240 litre yellow-lidded recycling bin and a 240 litre green-lidded food and garden waste bin.

Currently residents have the options of a 140 or 240 litre red garbage bin, which are collected weekly, as well as a yellow recycling bin, collected fortnightly.

The council’s budget allocation comes as many other Sydney councils have struggled with the rollouts of FOGO including Inner West Council where residents complained that waste like dirty nappies and dog poo was piling up and attracting pests due to household waste only being collected every fortnight.

The FOGO initiative is designed to boost composting rates.

In North Sydney, a similar organic waste trial involving hundreds of households in North Sydney returned “disappointing results” due to high contamination rates resulting in less than one third of waste diverted from landfill.

Blacktown’s food organic waste services will commence in August next year with red and green lidded bins collected weekly and yellow bins collected fortnightly.

Blacktown Councillor Allan Green said the rollout could be a major challenge for the council and believes the cost of the rollout campaign could far exceed the $1.38m budget.

The FOGO service will apply to around 100,000 homes in the Blacktown region.

“It’s going to be a very big challenge and apparently everywhere (where FOGO has been implemented to date) contamination is a really big problem and there are reports that too many people don’t care or take it seriously,” he said.

“The other big concern is people still need big red bins.”

Councillor Peter Camilleri said the $1.38m cost was an excessive amount to spend on an education and rollout campaign – suggesting the budget could be better spent on other councils services.

“While I understand there’s a massive education process, 16 staff is a lot of people who could be delivering other things,” he said.

The bin changes come into effect from next year in Blacktown.

As part of the rollout, households will have the option of keeping their 240 red litre bin however will have to pay additional costs as part of domestic waste services fees.

Blacktown Council has described the rollout as “biggest waste service change the city has experienced in more than three decades”.

Across NSW, councils have been given a deadline of 2030 to make the switch to FOGO as part of a NSW Government aim of achieving net zero emissions from organics in landfill.

The FOGO mandates will also apply to businesses including large supermarkets, the hospitality industry and institutions from July 1 next year.