We are in the grip of a waste revolution, and the City of Cockburn is a GO (Garden Organics) council, but what does this mean?
It means we provide a GO bin with a lime green lid especially for garden clippings, to properties 400sqm and above as part of the statewide roll out of the three bin system.
Contamination in the GO bins, such as plastics and glass, is manually removed by the City’s Henderson Waste Recovery Park (HWRP) staff.
Local household garden waste is transformed into saleable, high quality mulch to help fund more projects, services and infrastructure in the community.
Councils like Melville, which have chosen the Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) method, can accept food and garden waste in their waste bin, but this is not the method chosen by Cockburn.
Organic food waste and kitty litter should not be put in Cockburn’s lime green lid bin because it will contaminate the mulch product, making it unsaleable.
The GO method was chosen by Cockburn because it costs less to process garden waste into mulch at HWRP and supply to compost producers, than processing this garden waste by an external waste facility.
There are also limited facilities currently available to process FOGO economically. FOGO (including animal waste and food) must also be decontaminated by hand and this carries significant health risks which the City was not prepared to accept for its workers.
The State Government’s current waste levy, paid by local governments for each tonne of waste they landfill, is $70.
The City’s goal is to reduce waste being sent to landfill which benefits the environment and our ratepayers. While food and organic waste can be put into your general waste bin, there are other ways to keep it out of landfill altogether.
The City encourages householders to compost organic waste and offers a number of different composting, worm farming and Bokashi bin subsidies to help recycle your food waste in the home and give your garden a treat!