Green Waste and FOGO Bins in Australia: What's Accepted

FOGO stands for Food Organics and Garden Organics. A FOGO service accepts everything a garden-only bin takes — grass clippings, prunings, leaves, small branches and weeds — plus all food scraps: fruit and vegetable peelings, leftovers, meat, fish, bones, dairy, bread, coffee grounds and even paper towel in many areas. The combined material is processed at commercial composting facilities into soil conditioner, much of which goes back onto farms and parks.

Victoria: a three or four-bin system is being standardised statewide, and most councils now run or are rolling out FOGO, usually collected weekly with landfill moving to fortnightly.

New South Wales: the state government is requiring councils to offer FOGO, and many Sydney and regional councils already do. Some still run garden-only services.

South Australia: a long-time leader — Adelaide councils have accepted food scraps in the green bin for years, and kitchen caddies with compostable liners are widely supplied.

Western Australia: the state-funded three-bin FOGO rollout covers most Perth metropolitan and South West councils.

Queensland: outside Brisbane, many councils offer green waste as an opt-in, paid garden-only service, and FOGO is still the exception.

ACT, Tasmania and NT: Canberra has rolled FOGO out suburb by suburb; Hobart and other Tasmanian councils are expanding services; Darwin and Alice Springs largely remain garden-only.

In a full FOGO bin you can put all garden waste plus every kind of food, cooked or raw. What you cannot put in is just as important:

• No plastic bags or packaging — not even ones labelled 'biodegradable' or 'degradable'.
• No nappies, pet waste or kitty litter (a small number of councils allow pet waste — check first).
• No soil, rocks, bricks or large logs — they damage the shredders.
• No treated or painted timber, and no garden hose or plastic plant pots.

In a garden-only bin, everything above applies and food scraps are out too — they go in your red landfill bin instead. Not sure which bin is which? Our bin lid colours guide decodes the whole system.

Most FOGO councils supply a small kitchen caddy, typically around 7 litres, for bench-top food scraps. Where liners are permitted, they must be certified compostable to Australian Standard AS 4736 — look for the seedling logo and the standard printed on the bag. Ordinary 'green' or 'eco' bin liners are usually plastic and will contaminate the load. Some councils give liners away free at libraries and customer service centres; others ask you to line the caddy with newspaper or paper towel, or go liner-free. Never put the caddy itself or a plastic bag of scraps into the kerbside bin.

Food waste makes up roughly a third of the average Australian red bin. Buried in landfill it generates methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. When councils collect the green bin weekly and shrink the red bin pickup to fortnightly, two things happen: the smelly, putrescible waste leaves the kerb every week, and the cost of landfilling drops because far less material goes to tip. Councils that have switched typically report FOGO participation jumping and landfill tonnage falling by 20–40 per cent. The trade off for households is a fortnightly red bin, which feels tight until you move all food scraps into the green bin — then the red bin often stays half empty.

Keep the caddy somewhere you prepare food, empty it every couple of days, and sprinkle a little baking soda or line it with paper towel if odour is a worry in summer. Put the bin out the night before collection — trucks often start before 7 am — with the lid shut flat and wheels facing your house. If you cannot remember whether it is a green-bin week, a free BinMinder reminder is the simplest fix.