On a windy day, a crow picks up a banana peel from the top of a large rubbish pile at the Hallam Landfill site. The crow flies across to the other side of the site, accidentally dropping the peel and looking back as it disappears into the dense pit of waste.
For years this site has been the dumping point for household rubbish collected as part of the kerbside rubbish service for many councils, as well as rubbish collected by private and commercial operators.
It’s out of sight and out of mind to many – as consumers, the convenience of throwing out unwanted items is something we’ve grown accustomed to.
But that hole in the ground where those items find their resting place is filling up, and fast. By approximately 2026 this landfill may be closed, and landfill in the east of Melbourne will be a thing of the past.
Yarra Ranges Executive Officer of Resource Recovery, Graham Brew, said it was time for us all to rethink our waste.
“Waste is not just a problem for Council to deal with – we all need to play a part in the way we manage our waste,” he said.
“The days of relying on landfill to dump our waste is no longer viable – not only are we running out of space, it’s also bad for the environment.
“With the Hallam landfill site almost at capacity, we don’t have a lot of alternatives. We either come to terms with the environmental and financial costs that would be associated with travelling greater distances to truck our rubbish to landfill far away in the west, or we find a more sustainable way of dealing with it.”
Mr Brew said Council had been working over the past few years to start redesigning a waste service to support the State Government’s Recycling Victoria Policy, which aims to reduce reliance on landfill and look at better ways to dispose of waste, taking a resource recovery and circular economy approach.
“Key to the new service is the introduction of a Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) bin, which has already been rolled out in other municipalities across Victoria,” he said.
“In a recent audit undertaken in Yarra Ranges, around 45 per cent of the contents of a standard rubbish bin that goes to landfill is food and garden material, so the introduction of FOGO bins is set to be a game changer.
“From 2 October, residents will be able to dispose of their food and garden material in the one bin, with material collected being processed into compost for use on farms and gardens.”
The new FOGO service is estimated to save around 13,500 tonnes, or 1,700 garbage trucks, of food and garden material going to landfill each year.
Material from these bins will be collected weekly and taken to a composting facility, where it will be turned into nutrient-rich compost for gardens and parks.
“While we know there are some residents who are already composting at home, the FOGO bins will enable residents to dispose of other food scraps that are difficult to break down in a home composting system, including meat, bones and dairy products,” he said.
With the FOGO bin being collected weekly, it will also assist with a more regular cleanup of weeds and leaves in preparation for the leadup to and during the fire season.
