The federal government has announced $13 million in funding for a new large-scale composting facility in Canberra.
The facility will be built in Hume and will process food and garden waste collected from household green bins across the city.
City Services Minister Chris Steel said the new facility was an essential part of the food organics and garden organics (FOGO) rollout in the ACT.
"It will turn around 50,000 tonnes of food and organic waste into valuable compost for use in the agriculture and viticulture of our region, and gardens," he said.
"This is incredibly important for climate change, this is our third largest source of emissions."
'True circular process'
About 5,000 households in Belconnen, Bruce, Cook and Macquarie are currently trialling a FOGO collection system.
Mr Steel said that service would be expanded to include all ACT households once the new facility was up and running.
"This is going to be a fantastic story," he said.
"This is Canberrans' food waste that will be turned into compost, so that we can return those nutrients — which are otherwise going to landfill — to the soil to improve our soil and then grow our food again.
"So, it will be a true circular process."
Mr Steel said he expected the new facility would be able to accept commercial food waste, and would likely be an in-vessel composting system, which would allow monitoring of temperature, moisture and aeration.
"Importantly it will allow us to control the odour, which has been an issue when it comes to composting organic material in the past," he said.
'State-of-the-art' recycling facility to reduce contamination
Mr Steel said a new $23 million recycling facility would also be built in Hume.
"We were partnering with [the federal government] to upgrade the existing facility to process our plastic, aluminium, paper and cardboard products, as well as glass," he said.
"But as we've progressed through the design process, we've now come to the conclusion that it would be better for us to build a new state-of-the-art materials recovery facility adjacent to the existing site."
The new materials recovery facility will include optical sorting technology to better separate polymers, glass washing, and screening technology to sort through cardboard and paper.
"We want to make sure that we reduce our contamination, particularly for the paper and cardboard streams ... so that it can go onto the paper mill in Tumut and be turned into new paper and cardboard products," Mr Steel said.
He said the government would now go through a procurement process and he hoped both facilities would be operational within 18 months, though he noted the unpredictability of the current construction market.
Education key to FOGO success
Zero Waste Evolution chair Mia Swainson welcomed the funding injection and said a simple, targeted education program would be essential ahead of the FOGO facility coming online.
"The key is bringing Canberrans on the journey, making sure that people know what can go into the processing and what can't," she said.
"Depending on the technology, there'll be different food and garden waste from around the house that can go in and some that can't.
"So, keeping that contamination level down low will be really key to success."
Ms Swainson said success would require a new way of thinking about waste for many Canberrans.
"Globally the trend is for ... all of the organic waste to be recycled and reprocessed," she said.
"Yes, it's a bit of a change and a cultural shift, but, overtime people get used to it and it's just how we build our lives."
