Food and garden organics - green lid

No, pet poo and kitty litter must be placed in the general rubbish bin (red lid).

Remember that when the material goes through the composting process, contamination is removed by hand, and while it will be gross for someone to sort through food waste let's not make it any worse for those workers by putting poo in there as well!

To see how it is sorted watch the Jamie Durie video in this section.

Not if you are within a compulsory township zone.

Council’s Kerbside Collection Services Policy outlines which properties the Food and Garden Organics applies to.

Under the Policy, residents living in more densely populated and urban areas will receive the four-bin service, while those living in rural areas along Council’s collection route will receive a three-bin service, with the food and garden organics (green lid) service being optional.

Council is awaiting the finalisation of Recycling Victoria’s draft Household Waste and Recycling Service Standard. This Service Standard will define the way in which councils across Victoria are to provide their kerbside services and will contain guidance surrounding service provision to our community receiving a kerbside service who home compost, use caddy liners, are commercial customers, or are utilising approved collection points.

If you are home composting, that is great, we encourage you to continue to do so. There are some items that do not compost well at home such as citrus and onion peel, meat, and fish scraps (including shells), eggshells, dairy products, noxious weeds, and insect-infested plants. All these products can go into the Food and Garden Organics bin.

The introduction of the food and garden organics bin will allow you the best of both worlds composting at home and disposing of hard to manage food scraps and garden materials.

The food and garden organics bin will be optional for people living in rural areas under Council's Kerbside Collection Services Policy.

A kitchen caddy is a small plastic container with lid and handle designed for temporarily storing food scraps in your kitchen so they can easily be transferred to the food and garden organics bin. Council will provide a kitchen caddy to all households that have a food and garden organics collection service.

Once your caddy is full, empty the contents into the food and garden organics bin. To minimise odour, we recommend you empty your caddy every few days, then rinse it ready for the next use. To reduce odour in your bin it is recommended to have some green waste in the bottom of the bin before the food waste is placed. 

You can line your caddy with a single paper towel or a small amount of newspapers. Kitchen caddies are dishwasher safe and can be placed into the dishwasher for cleaning.

Council will not be supplying caddy liners – they are not mandatory

You can use the smooth, easy-to-clean Council-provided caddy without a liner by emptying it daily into your FOGO bin and rinsing or placing it in the dishwasher.

Alternatively, place a single sheet of paper towel or a small amount of garden waste in the bottom to keep it dry
Items can be wrapped in a single sheet of paper towel, butchers' paper or one sheet of newspaper.

If you choose to use liners, they must be certified compostable to AS4736 standards and contain no bioplastic. These are accepted by our organics processing facility – but please, do not tie a knot in the bag, as it won’t break down and will contaminate the compost

Council has worked with local retailers to ensure certified compostable liners are available locally.

Bins can get smelly from time to time.

By putting your food waste into the food and garden organics bin, most of the waste that breaks down (food) and gets smelly will be picked up every week.

When your food and garden organics bin is emptied into the kerbside collection truck, the material is taken to Repurpose It, a waste management facility in Epping. Repurpose It use an in-vessel composting process followed by open windrow maturation to process our waste organic material into high quality compost that is free of contamination and weed seeds.

The compost material is sold by Repurpose It to a wide variety of customers for use in landscaping projects. Some of the compost will be returned to Murrindindi Shire and available at Council’s Resource Recovery Centres.

A collection point is a place where people bring their bins to when the truck cannot (or it is not economical to) travel past the driveway of a property. Use of collection points must be approved by Council, and Council's collection contractor.

If a property is required to use a collection point, then the collection services will always be optional, though certain combinations of bins are mandatory (waste must be accompanied by recycling and recycling must be accompanied by glass).

Council is awaiting the finalisation of Recycling Victoria’s draft Household Waste and Recycling Service Standard. This Service Standard will define the way in which Councils across Victoria are to provide their kerbside services and will contain guidance surrounding service provision to our community receiving a kerbside service who home compost, use caddy liners, are commercial customers, or are utilising approved collection points.