Geraldton councillors vote for FOGO no-go but welcome $100,000 allocation into study for alternatives

Dreams of a recycling program for Geraldton have been squashed for now, with city councillors voting against the extension of the FOGO trial, but backing an opportunity for an alternative to be found. Since 2020, the City of Greater Geraldton have been trialling a recycling program known as FOGO, where food organics and garden organics are collected in kitchen caddies and then placed in special bins. The trial involved 500 randomly selected houses across Geraldton. FOGO such as food scraps and garden waste can be composted rather than sent to landfill, but only if separated from other rubbish. Council documents revealed a host of reasons the trial was not succeeding, which included low bin presentation and contamination rates. On average, 58 per cent of the 500 bins were being collected each week, which amounts to 290 bins put out for pick-up. The executive recommendation was for councillors to vote in favour of ending the FOGO trial, but to allocate $100,000 in the 2024-25 budget to investigate “alternative waste avoidance and recovery options”. At the full council meeting on Tuesday night, councillors unanimously voted against the extension of the trial but made it clear to city executives that an alternative must be sought. The motion was moved by Cr Michael Librizzi who said he was a supporter of extending the trial, but at the current stage it was going in the wrong direction and costs were too high. He said the $100,000 allocation into a study on alternative options was the most important part of the executive recommendation. Cr Aaron Horsman said: “We need to take the lead as a council. They’re teaching recycling at school.” A number of councillors voted in favour of finishing the trial and allocating money into next year’s study. Cr Jenna Denton said council needed to continue with the trial-and-error process to find what suited the community. City CEO Ross McKim said the contamination rate averaged 18 per cent, which led to increased costs in sorting and preparing the waste for processing. The annual cost of the initiative was $163,953 during the trial period. “This cost included construction of a FOGO pad at Meru required to process the waste, purchase of 500 240-litre FOGO bins and 500 kitchen caddies, education and marketing materials and the collection, decontamination, transport, and processing of FOGO waste during the trial period,” Mr McKim said. City director of infrastructure services Chris Lee said the FOGO bins would not go to waste, and would be repurposed for events, or used as replacement bins.