The NSW Government has introduced a Bill to parliament for three new mandates, including the collection of source-separated food and garden organics (FOGO) waste for households and businesses and reporting on food donations by supermarkets.
Under the legislation, all NSW households will be required to have a council FOGO collection from 1 July 2030.
“Councils have long called for measures to reduce the volume of waste going to landfill, but it is important that regulatory and financial settings are in place to support the roll out of this new mandate,” Local Government NSW (LGNSW) said in a statement.
The Bill includes broad provision for the NSW Government to issue exemptions from the mandate. This could include exempting entire LGAs where appropriate (such as rural LGAs where a FOGO collection is not needed or is not viable due to the lack of markets), or exempting classes of buildings.
Councils will be able to choose to collect food organics and garden organics together or separately.
“LGNSW has previously called for the NSW Government to postpone the mandate for multi-unit dwellings until 2035, in recognition that infrastructure and access concerns may mean FOGO collection is not practically possible in some cases. In these cases, exemptions until collection is feasible would be sensible,” LGNSW said.
“While the legislation will introduce this new requirement from 2030, it does not include details of necessary funding. Councils will require funds to offset implementation of this new mandate, and the NSW Government will also need to ensure it funds and leads a statewide education campaign to inform residents about this change.”
As resolved at the Annual Conference last week, LGNSW is calling for the NSW Government to return 100% of the Waste Levy to councils, and for the NSW Government to deliver solutions for the processing, diversion, recycling and disposal of waste in NSW. This will be even more important once FOGO collection is mandated, it says.
“It is also critical that the state and federal governments address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other chemicals in compostable packaging, so that food packaging can be processed through FOGO services without contaminating this resource.”
