Kerbside food waste FAQs

FOGO stands for Food Organics and Garden Organics. Frankston City Council’s FOGO bins are green lidded bins that you are able to place food scraps and garden clippings into, which is made into compost.

About 40% of a general waste bin is food scraps. Food scraps in a general waste bin is a wasted resource as it will be sent to landfill, where it degrades and generates harmful greenhouse gases. Instead, placing it into your FOGO bin means it will be made into nourishing compost for use by Aussie farmers. Soil with compost added is able to absorb and store water better – making our soils more resistant to droughts. Your FOGO waste is valuable to our farmers – it’s an easy way to make a big difference.

• Garden clippings - flowers, leaves, grass clippings, pruning, etc.
• Food scraps – leftovers, mouldy or uneatable food scraps, bread, vegetable scraps, meat, bones, milk, cheese, etc.

Visit our what goes on my bins? page for a comprehensive list of FOGO acceptable and non-acceptable items.

It is important that only garden clippings and food scraps are placed into your FOGO bin to ensure that it breaks down correctly during the commercial composting process. Ensure that you remove all packaging/stickers from food scraps before placing it into your FOGO bin.

Great work, keep it up! A FOGO bin service will compliment your home compost or worm farm systems as you can put hard to compost items such as bones, meat and citrus into your FOGO bin. If you want to find out more info about our home compost rebate program, take a look here: Home Compost Rebate Program.

Pet poo and pet litter (that likely contains poo) are biohazards for staff working on the sorting line at the composting facility. ALL pet poo and pet litter needs to be bagged and disposed in your general waste bin (red lid).

A roll of liners will be provided with the kitchen caddy, which should last for six months. You can pick up a roll of liners from one of our one of our Customer Service Centres or  Frankston Regional Recycling and Recovery Centre. (Limit of one per household each six months and subject to availability).

Alternatively:

• Use paper towel or newspaper to line your caddy
• Place items loose in your caddy (rinse your caddy regularly)
• Purchase 100% compostable liners from selected supermarkets, garden supply stores or online suppliers.

It is crucial that you look for the certification logo that attests that the bags have been tested and meet the Australian standards compost ability and will completely breakdown during composting.
Compostable liners must be lime green (same colour as Council issued) so that other coloured bags can be easily identified and removed as contamination.

Some natural and cost effective ways to reduce smells in your bin after collection: sprinkle baking soda, vinegar or whole cloves into your bin. Placing lavender, eucalyptus or mint oil in and around your bin can help with smells also and if you have concerns of pests/insects.

Please check these handy tips and tricks to help you reduce or avoid any smells or insects on your bins:

Frankston City Council - FOGO Tips and Tricks(PDF, 5MB)

No. Our FOGO service doesn’t cater for commercial quantities of food waste and is only available to residential households with a kerbside service at this time.

If you don’t have a FOGO bin service or want to order an additional FOGO bin, you can order it online through Council’s My Bins - Manage your bins page or over the phone on 1300 322 322.

Reducing waste can help save you money and conserve resources and energy at the same time! All the little things add up and help with reducing your waste!

From thinking differently about what you buy and what you actually need, to refilling water bottles or using bags for life, to composting at home or placing all food scraps into your FOGO bin - there are lots of easy ways to make a real difference.

To help households reduce waste to landfill Frankston City Council offers rebates for homeowners and renters for:

• Home Compost & Worm Farm Rebate Program  
• Reusable Sanitary, Nappy and Incontinence Rebate Program

Find out more info about how you can reduce your waste here: Reducing Your Waste

At this stage, there are no changes to collection frequencies. Not all households currently have a FOGO bins service. The red lidded general waste bin will be collected weekly on your collection day and the green lidded FOGO bin will be collected fortnightly, alternate to your yellow lidded mixed recycling bin.

Find your Bin collection day here.