The new 4-bin kerbside collection service includes:

• Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) – collected weekly
• General Waste – collected fortnightly
• Mixed recycling – collected fortnightly
• Glass only – collected every 4 weeks

All Victorian councils are required to provide a four-stream waste and recycling service to residents in line with the Victorian Government's Recycling Victoria Policy. These policy requirements aim to improve Victoria’s recycling services, divert more waste from landfill and reduce the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Policy requires household waste and recycling services be standardised across the state. All households will have access to four waste and recycling streams, including:

• Glass Recycling
• Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO)
• Mixed Recyclables
• General waste

Councils across Victoria need to implement these changes.

FOGO makes up over 66% of waste in residential kerbside garbage bins in Murrindindi Shire.

By introducing FOGO service we can divert a significant amount of material from landfill and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by compositing this material.

When organic matter ends up in the landfill it created methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2

Glass, when crushed into paper in the recycling collection truck, contaminates recyclable paper material. making it unusable. By introducing a separate glass recycling service, we can increase the quantity and quality of recycled material allowing us to get the most value from our resources.

Council’s existing waste and recycling contracts finish in 2025, which means the new services will be introduced in July 2025.

In 2022, we participated in a tender process for waste and recycling collection services to enable us to implement the four-stream waste system, and in 2023, we appointed the successful contractors, as outlined below:

• Solo Resource Recovery for kerbside collection and related services, with a kerbside collection format that includes:
  • Fortnightly collection of general waste
  • Fortnightly collection of mixed recycling
  • Weekly collection of food and garden organics
  • Monthly collection of separate glass recycling
• Cleanaway Pty Ltd for processing of commingled recycling and separate glass recycling
• Repurpose-It for food and garden organics processing services

The draft Policy comes into effect in line with the introduction of the 4 bin services in 2025, and outlines:

• changes to the collection route across the Shire to include additional roads
• mandatory zones for the 4 bin service, as well as zones where the FOGO service will be optional
• opt-in options for commercial and industrial properties for glass and FOGO services
• how and where the Waste Management Charge and collection services charges will be applied

Food scraps and garden waste will be accepted in your FOGO bin, including:

• Dairy, bread, and meat bones
• Citrus
• Rose clippings
• Eggshells
• Corn cobs
• Noxious weeds such as blackberry bush

We will be providing more information to our community about the FOGO bin as part of a broad education program.

By introducing a FOGO service, we can divert a significant amount of material from landfill and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by composting this material.  

When organic matter ends up in landfill it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2.

For properties located within the “Defined Urban Zones”, the FOGO collection service will be mandatory. For rural properties along the collection route, the FOGO collection service will be optional.

The 4-bin waste and recycling collection service is mandatory for all properties within the “Defined Urban Zone” or township areas.. If you live within a township area, you will be required to have a four-bin waste service.

Along the collection route in Rural Zone areas, it will be mandatory to have a 3-bin collection service (General Waste, Mixed Recycling, Glass Recycling) and optional to have a FOGO service.

Properties not on the collection route can apply to have a service, however provision of the service is dependent on the requirements set out in Council’s Kerbside Waste and Recycling Services Policy.

Our draft Kerbside Waste and Recycling Services Policy outlines changes to our collection route to include additional roads and properties. This means some areas which have previously not received a kerbside collection service, will now receive services. In particular, the collection route has been extended to roads not currently serviced in many parts of the Shire but most notably across the Highlands / Caveat / Terip Terip area. Click here to view the waste collection route map.

Any property along the collection route (that has a house) is required to have a kerbside collection service. For properties in the Rural Zone it will be mandatory to have a 3-bin service (General Waste, Mixed Recycling and Glass Recycling) and the FOGO service will be optional. For properties within the “Defined Urban Zone” or township areas, a four-bin service is mandatory.

This change will impact properties that have previously not opted-into the kerbside service, despite being on the collection route, as well as those properties on roads which have been added to the route. If your property is not on our collection route, you will not receive these services but will be able to continue to use our network of Resource Recovery Centres where we will be adding services to enable recycling of food waste and separate glass.

Council has not yet determined the budget for the new services as contract details are still being finalised. Our draft Kerbside Waste and Recycling Services Policy outlines changes to the structure of the current Waste and Recycling Charges which appear on the Rates Notices of those properties with a current collection service. This includes the introduction of a new Waste Management Charge which will apply to all properties regardless of location or housing status, and kerbside collection service charges which will be applied on a cost recovery basis only.

The Waste Management Charge will fund those waste related activities that apply throughout the Shire, including public litter bins and dumped rubbish management, Resource Recovery Centre operations and waste education, while the kerbside collection service charges are set to recover exactly the cost of the service provided to the house.

The Defined Urban Zones are those densely settled township areas of the Shire defined in the maps at the back of the draft Policy. All properties in these areas will be required to have a four-bin waste service. This ensures that a critical mass of properties is subscribed to the service and makes the service viable.

The policy only relates to the kerbside bin collection service. Council does not provide a hard waste collection service. We operate five Resource Recovery Centres with subsidised prices for ratepayers and Shire residents.

In preparing the draft Policy, Council reviewed policies of other Victorian councils to understand the aspects of a kerbside service that are typically governed by a policy. This benchmarking exercise provided key insights, such as the broad exemption of businesses from mandatory service arrangements.

We also used feedback gathered from over 200 community members in late 2022 to inform the draft Policy.

The Policy has been reviewed by Council with feedback incorporated.

We will use community feedback to help finalise our draft Policy. All comments and suggestions will be considered, with the final Policy presented to Council in June 2024 for adoption.