FOUR suburbs in Belconnen will take part in a pilot program in coming months of a dedicated food and garden organics collection service (FOGO) aimed at reducing waste going to landfill and turning  household scraps into compost.

The government says about a third of the ACT’s residential garbage bin contents is food waste, which currently breaks down in the airless conditions of landfill and emits methane.

The pilot suburbs of Belconnen, Bruce, Cook and Macquarie have been selected because of their mix of single residential dwellings and multi-unit properties.

“A focus of the pilot will be to look at contamination rates, and how FOGO collection can be implemented successfully across a mix of single residential houses and multi-unit apartment dwellings before we roll this out the service to the rest of Canberra,” says City Services Minister Chris Steel.

As part of the pilot, green-lidded bins will change from garden waste only to FOGO bins. Participating households that do not already have a green waste bin will be provided one free of charge to maximise waste diverted from landfill.

All participating households will be given an easy-to-use kitchen caddy with compostable liners as a convenient way to collect their food scraps. The food scraps in the compostable bags can then be emptied into the FOGO bin along with garden waste.

Waste collection for single-residential households in the pilot suburbs will change, with green FOGO bins collected weekly instead of fortnightly, and garbage bins collected fortnightly instead of weekly.

The FOGO pilot is intended to continue through to when the service is rolled out to all Canberra households in 2023. More at act.gov.au/fogo.