![The rubbish trial will commence in select suburbs later this year. Picture: Dion Georgopoulos The rubbish trial will commence in select suburbs later this year. Picture: Dion Georgopoulos](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/RXMuw2JbrrS7ELSxSY9rkR/66bc932e-7658-4d97-8337-88a276f31ef9.jpg/r0_435_4256_2828_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Garbage collection in the ACT is to be shaken-up with more green bin collections and fewer ordinary red-top bin garbage collections.
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The collection of yellow top paper and bottle recycling bins will be unchanged.
The restructuring comes because the ACT is revamping its recycling scheme to include household kitchen waste, including meat.
At the moment, only garden clippings and the like can be put into green bins, but that will change in a trial to start before the end of the year in Belconnen, Bruce, Cook and Macquarie.
The government plan is to extend the scheme to the whole of the ACT in 2023.
Participants will be given a special bin for the kitchen - what the ACT government calls "an easy-to-use kitchen caddy".
Food waste can be dumped in the indoor bin as it occurs and then the liner bag put in the existing green bin to be collected outside every week.
The second innovation is that apartment blocks will be included. The ACT government has been talking to property owners to see how individual units can deposit kitchen waste.
The type of scheme is known as Food Organics and Garden Organics - FOGO. Organic matter is material which was once alive - like plants or meat.
"About a third of our residential garbage bin contents are food waste which currently goes to landfill and contributes to our emissions," ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr said.
When food goes to landfill dumps, it breaks down and emits methane which is a global warming gas, so diverting food waste to recycling plants will help the ACT achieve its target of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
The suburbs for the pilot scheme have been chosen because they have a mix of houses and apartment blocks.
Participating households will be able to use their existing green bin. Those that don't have one will be able to get one from the ACT government.
In some places, a third bin is used - one for ordinary garbage, one for garden greenery and the third for kitchen waste (on top of the yellow bin for paper and bottles). The ACT government is going for two bins. There may be a trade-off between the complexity of a recycling scheme and the support it gets from the public.
The success of the scheme will depend on how much people who participate will "contaminate" the green bin by also throwing in plastic, metals and non-recyclable organic matter like leather.
Recycling and Waste Reduction Minister Chris Steel said: "We will be educating Belconnen residents in the pilot area on how to make this change.
"Participating households will be contacted by way of letter and we will work closely with residents to support their transition to the FOGO service ahead of the pilot commencing later this year."
Studies of similar schemes in other places in Australia showed how much waste gets recycled depended on a raft of factors like the size of bins and the frequency of collection.
- For more information on the FOGO pilot, visit act.gov.au/fogo.
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