Community members can now dispose of food in their lime-green bin, with Yarra Ranges' Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) collections starting from today.
From Monday, 2 October, lime-green bins will be collected weekly from every property across Yarra Ranges, with yellow-lidded recyclables and red-lidded rubbish bins collected fortnightly on alternating weeks.
Yarra Ranges Mayor, Jim Child, said that the preparation for FOGO saw tens of thousands of green bins and kitchen caddies delivered over recent months.
"The change that we're about to undertake as a community is the largest since the introduction of recycling some 30 years ago," Cr Child said.
"By keeping food scraps out of landfill, we'll prevent greenhouse emissions and useful compost going to waste. Instead of rotting amongst rubbish, the contents of your FOGO bin will be turned into useful compost for farms and gardens to grow something new.
"To prepare for this change, we've rolled out tens of thousands of lime green lidded bins to go to properties that didn't have them before, and the delivery of some 60,000 kitchen caddies to make separating food easy".
"Logistically, this is one of the largest projects we've undertaken as a Council. This has been a major priority for us, and a legislated change for every local government in Victoria.
"Though we've changed over more than 80 per cent of the community's rubbish bin lids from dark green to red, we know there's still a few with their old lids.
"Rest assured that our contractors will continue to collect bins, regardless of their lid colour, and will swap over old green lids as part of collections over coming months."
Prior to FOGO collections beginning, about 45 per cent of rubbish collected in the Yarra Ranges consisted of food scraps.
All food scraps, including dairy, meat, bones and seafood can be disposed of in the lime-green FOGO bin alongside garden clippings.
"We've already seen other Councils in Victoria have large reductions in food unnecessarily ending up in landfill, with some reducing general waste by 45 per cent in their first month," Cr Child said.
"Using your kitchen caddy and putting your food waste in your FOGO bin will reduce strain on landfills and make sure that nothing goes to waste.
"Thank you to everyone in the Yarra Ranges community for being part of this important change. Through changes like these, we'll leave behind a better community for the next generations."
As part of the new FOGO collections, rubbish bin collections will be collected each fortnight, on the opposite week to recycling collections. Every household's recycling collection fortnight will remain the same.
The FOGO bin can be placed out for collection every week, and the bin can take any food scraps - including meat, dairy, fruit peels and other items hard to compost at home.
Visit yarraranges.vic.gov.au/whywasteit
