Students lead the way in countdown to FOGO and glass collections

More than 40 children from six primary schools have harnessed their super sorting powers.

The students participated in the City of Ballarat’s first Waste Super Sorter Competition at City Oval this week as part of an educational initiative.

The competition challenged teams to sort their waste into the four waste streams of general household waste, mixed recycling, food organics and garden organics (FOGO) and glass.

Placing items into the correct bin prevents the contamination of recyclables, ensuring more recyclables are reused and repurposed – which means less waste goes into landfill.

Students also participated in seed planting activities, discovered the benefits of worm farms for composting, and learnt about the City of Ballarat’s Soft Plastics Collection Pilot Program.

The City of Ballarat is preparing to introduce a fortnightly FOGO collection service and a monthly glass collection service to begin from November this year.

City of Ballarat Mayor, Cr Tracey Hargreaves said it was great to see the municipality’s students having fun testing their super sorting skills while also becoming young champions for the environment.

“We hope our youth can lead the way and encourage everyone to get on board with becoming super sorters,” she said.

“The better we sort our waste and the more we can recycle, the less waste that goes into our general household waste bin – which ends up at the Ballarat Regional Landfill at Smythesdale.

“The introduction of our food organics and garden organics – or FOGO – collection will help us recycle our food and garden waste into new products, like compost, while reducing the amount of food waste sent to landfill.”

From November, food waste can be added to households’ FOGO (current green waste) bin with the lime green lid.  

Food organics includes fruit and vegetable scraps, raw and cooked meat and bones, citrus, leftovers, seafood, shellfish shells and eggshells.

There will be no changes to the weekly general household waste collection and fortnightly mixed recyclables collection.

More information about the waste collection changes will be provided to residents in the lead up to the introduction of the FOGO and glass services.

A group of students from Caledonian Primary School scored the highest result in the super sorting challenge. The students have won a bus trip to learn more about how recycling is processed for reuse and recycling at Australian Paper Recovery in Melbourne, which sorts the City of Ballarat’s mixed recycling.

Download the Ballarat Waste app for the latest updates to waste and recycling.