Page 2082 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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Lessons from other jurisdictions tell us that education is critical to reducing contamination of FOGO bins, and efforts need to commence well before a full service rollout. We would not want to see contamination of FOGO too high for product specifications or environmental standards due to inadequate user education. Nor do we want the Canberra community to embrace separating their food scraps only to see this material stockpiled or in landfill due to market instability. That would be truly wasteful. Robust research on a collection model for FOGO needs to occur, with collections potentially coinciding with the conclusion of the key territory waste and recycling collection contracts in 2023.
While FOGO would build on the highly popular green bins service in single-unit dwellings, apartment blocks will present a challenge. ACT NoWaste has been working with building managers to accommodate green bins where possible; however, not all sites can easily accommodate additional waste services. The recently updated 2019 development control code for waste management requires building designers to set aside space for green bins, but the existing stock of apartments and townhouses will need specific strategies to accommodate FOGO facilities.
ACT NoWaste is working through these matters. The challenges are not insurmountable, and we have a responsibility as global citizens to address this issue. Food waste prevention is an integral part of the European Commission’s new circular economy package, and in the United States they have a goal of halving food waste and loss by the year 2030. Halving per capita global food waste is also the foundation of United Nations sustainable development goal 12.3. In alignment with this goal, the national food waste strategy, released in late 2017 by all Australian governments, aims to halve food waste and loss by 2030.
The ACT government continues to engage proactively with the commonwealth government, with Food Innovation Australia Ltd and the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre. While the ACT works with our national counterparts on halving food waste by 2030, there is great work being done locally on educating Canberra’s schoolchildren and businesses on reducing food waste, through the government’s Actsmart program. Food rescue charities, such as OzHarvest, are recovering thousands of kilos of fresh and frozen food and feeding Canberrans with support through the Community Services Directorate. Many Canberrans are already doing the right thing in composting or feeding chickens with kitchen scraps. But not everyone can do this. With the green bins now available to all suburbs, we are a step closer to FOGO as the government continues to work on the issues I have outlined today.
The ACT generates around one million tonnes of waste per annum across the categories of household, commercial and industrial, and construction and demolition waste. Around 70 per cent of this is currently diverted from landfill. For every 10,000 tonnes of waste we recover, we get one per cent closer towards our resource recovery target of 90 per cent by 2025.
Reducing food waste is an important issue for our community. But the success is contingent upon effective planning before we are ready to roll out a FOGO collection
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