WASTE
MANAGEMENT — FOOD ORGANICS AND GARDEN ORGANICS
785. Ms C.M. ROWE to the Minister for Environment:
I refer to the McGowan government's
commitment to reduce waste and meet its recycling target, including by supporting
local government's transition to a three-bin food organics, garden
organics system, which the City of Belmont will do in July next year. Can the
minister outline to the house what local governments that have not transitioned
to FOGO services can do to ensure they are doing their bit to help WA reach the
recycling targets set out in the WA government's Waste avoidance and
resource recovery strategy 2030?
Ms A.
SANDERSON replied:
I thank the member for Belmont for
her question. FOGO is a critical part of the state reaching the targets we set
out in the Waste avoidance and resource recovery strategy 2030, which
was launched by my predecessor Stephen Dawson. Western Australians have the
unfortunate title of being among the biggest wasters in the country. Between
2014 and 2015, Western Australians generated more waste than people in any
other Australian state or territory,
disposed of the second-highest amounts of landfill and had equal second-lowest
rates of resource recovery, or recycling. That is what instigated my
predecessor to launch the Waste avoidance and resource recovery strategy
2030, which sets out very ambitious targets to reduce waste and recover
more from that waste.
We plan to increase waste material
recovery to 70 per cent by 2025 and 75 per cent by 2030. A really important
part of that waste stream, and one of the biggest parts of the waste stream, is
FOGO. FOGO stands for food organics and
garden organics. FOGO systems work by recycling organic waste that would
otherwise end up in landfill. Food waste disposed to landfill generates
greenhouse gases, reduces landfill capacity and represents a loss of valuable
organic material that would otherwise be recovered for productive use. We are
making meaningful strides towards our goal of 75 per cent, but we will not get
there without all metropolitan local governments getting on board and adopting
the three-bin FOGO system. We will work with all those local governments that
have not done it yet.
One local government that has done
an outstanding job in its transition to FOGO is the City of Melville. Melville
is one of 13 local governments, covering 150 000 households in Perth and the
south west, to have implemented a three-bin FOGO system. Another 19 local
governments have committed to transition to FOGO. Since Melville rolled out the
three-bin FOGO system to all households across the city in July 2019, it has
reversed its disposal and recovery ratios so that now two tonnes of FOGO are
collected for each tonne of generated waste. As of September 2021, Melville's kerbside waste recovery rate was more
than 65 per cent and the city reported a 23 per cent reduction in the tonnages
from the garden organics verge collections and a 10 per cent reduction in
recycling tonnages from fortnightly collections. FOGO helps to reduce
our landfill.
Last week, the Minister for Local
Government and I announced the launch of a step-by-step guide to help local
governments plan and implement better practice food organics, garden organics
collection services. Developed in conjunction with the Western Australian Local
Government Association, the guidelines outline the entire process, from the
initial stages through to the final stages of collecting FOGO. A recent report
commissioned by the Waste Authority found that a high-performing, three-bin
FOGO service was most effective in recovering material, achieving rates of
around 65 per cent. The report also found that FOGO systems had the lowest cost
per tonne recovered and produced significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions
than disposing waste to landfill.
The state government's $20
million Better Bins Plus: Go FOGO program will continue to provide grants to
local governments to assist with their transition. I encourage all members in
this place, and councillors in the Cities of Canning, Gosnells, Kwinana,
Mandurah, Armadale and South Perth and the Shire of Murray, to get their hands
on a copy of the step-by-step guide and help Western Australia reach its target
to provide FOGO services by 2025.