Every household in Randwick City could soon be putting out a kitchen food scraps bin each week for collection along with the normal rubbish, recycling and green waste services.
After an initial trial of 5,000 homes that have been collecting their kitchen food scraps, council have resolved to expand the trial.
Participating households, located within a unit or townhouse complex, are provided with small kitchen caddies and biodegradable bags for all their kitchen food scraps.
The bags from these kitchen caddies are placed in a dedicated food scraps bin and collected separately on bin night to be composted or turned into bio-gas rather than sent to landfill.
Council recently received a grant from the NSW Government’s Environmental Trust for $914,519 to extend the kitchen food scraps collection over the next three years to Randwick City residents living in apartments and townhouses.
“So far the food waste processing trial of 5,000 homes has been very successful and the expansion would mean even better sustainability outcomes,” said Randwick City Mayor Scott Nash.
“We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from residents who have participated in the food waste trial so far.
“The trial has really helped our environment by diverting rubbish away from landfill. I am pleased that we are now looking at rolling this out to all 35,000 apartments and townhouses in Randwick City that wish to take part.
“At the moment nearly 40 per cent of our 27,000 tonnes of general waste collected, that’s rubbish from residential red-lidded rubbish bins, is made up of food scraps and this mostly ends up in landfill.
“It makes sense to look at ways of recovering as much of this material as possible rather than dumping it.
The NSW Government has a target for all NSW councils to increase the recycling rate for solid waste to 70 percent by 2021–22.
Randwick City Council is well on its way to meeting this target and has increased its resource recovery rate from 38 percent in 2012 to 52 percent in 2014.
