Perth households are being asked to build a new habit. Starting this month, the City of Perth has begun rolling out FOGO bins, or Food Organics and Garden Organics, to houses and smaller residential buildings with up to five units. The lime-green lidded bin that many residents knew as their garden waste bin has been upgraded: you can now put food scraps in it, too.
Residents in the rollout receive a free kitchen caddy and two rolls of compostable liners to help collect food scraps inside before emptying them into the FOGO bin. The collection schedule is changing as well. The lime-green FOGO bin goes out weekly, while the red-lidded general waste bin and yellow-lidded recycling bin are collected on alternating fortnights. This will likely result in many overflowing, smelly general waste bins on bin day.
The City of Perth isn’t the first local government to roll out FOGO. As of October 2024, 23 Western Australian local governments had rolled out FOGO to 270,000 households. The City of Fremantle was among the first councils in Perth to make the switch, and others, including Belmont, Cottesloe, Swan, Bayswater, and Joondalup, have since followed. It’s part of a state-mandated push, with Western Australia’s Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Strategy 2030 targeting a consistent three-bin FOGO rollout across all local governments in the Perth and Peel regions.
What can you put in the FOGO bin?
All food organics are acceptable — fruit and vegetable scraps, meat, dairy, tea leaves, coffee grounds, bread, seafood, eggshells, leftovers, and unpackaged out-of-date food. On the garden side: grass clippings, plant cuttings, flowers, weeds, small branches, twigs, and leaves.
What can’t go in the FOGO bin?
Regular plastic bags are out, including biodegradable and “recycled plastic” bags. Caddy liners need to be compostable to break down properly at the organics facility without introducing chemicals into the compost. Putting plastic bags in the FOGO bin contaminates the entire load.
The red-lidded general waste bin remains the destination for anything that can’t be composted or recycled, such as nappies, plastic bags, soft plastics, and anything with food residue that can’t be cleaned off.
The aim is to reduce the amount going to landfill
Most of what Perth households throw away doesn’t need to go to landfill, and landfill is financially and environmentally expensive.
Waste audits across Perth and Peel show that only about 26% of what goes into red-lidded general waste bins is actual general waste. The rest is organic material that could be composted or items that can be recycled.
When organic waste goes to a landfill rather than compost, it breaks down without oxygen and releases methane — a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than carbon dioxide over a short timeframe. Turning FOGO material into compost instead reduces methane emissions and produces high-quality compost for use on farms, in parks, and in gardens.
The initial rollout covers houses and smaller residential buildings with up to five units. Residents unsure whether their property is included can contact the City of Perth directly.
Properties not in the first phase will continue on their existing bin system for now, with the City working through staged rollouts; a common approach given that apartments and high-density buildings require separate planning to manage contamination and shared bin configurations.
