THE federal government will fund $13 million for the construction of a large-scale Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) composting facility in Canberra.

The facility set to be built at the Hume Resource Recovery Estate – adjacent to the existing Materials Recovery Facility at Mugga Lane – will be capable of processing 50,000 tonnes of the ACT’s organic waste each year.

Federal Minister for the environment Tanya Plibersek today announced the funding will come from the Food Waste for Healthy Soils Fund.

“We are committed to halving the amount of organic waste sent to landfill nationally by 2030. This not only keeps the value of our food waste in the Australian economy but also helps to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions,” said Plibersek.

“We expect the fund to help divert up to 3.4 million tonnes of food and organic waste from landfill nationally and put it to productive use on our agricultural soils as compost and soil improvers.”

The ACT and federal government will also co-fund $23 million to build a new Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at Hume, rather than upgrading the existing facility.

“Building a brand new modern MRF facility, adjacent to the old facility, will ensure the ACT has an entirely new state of the art recycling infrastructure as our region grows,” said ACT City Services Minister Chris Steel.

“It will improve safety and avoid the need to close the existing MRF during construction. New technology at the new plant will deliver the capacity to sort, separate, and process materials for the whole Canberra region, creating higher quality resources with higher value uses including remanufacturing.”

“Once built, Canberran’s food and garden waste will be collected in their green bin and recycled into nutrient-rich compost, cutting waste emissions by up to 30 percent.”

Organic waste facility given green light