Composting in the Concrete Jungle: How FOGO Is Finding Its Place in Australia’s MUDs and RFBs
By: James Cosgrove and Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group
In 2025, Australians are getting serious about food waste; and it’s not just limited to suburban dwellings. Across the country, important steps are being taken in high-rise apartments, unit blocks, and townhouses with the goal to make food and garden organics (FOGO) recycling a part of everyday life.
For several years now, kerbside collection for single dwellings (standalone homes), where food scraps and garden clippings are turned into compost instead of being disposed to landfill, has been recognised as the obvious and simplest target for rolling out FOGO.
However, FOGO in multi-unit dwellings (MUDs – e.g. townhouses and residential flat buildings (RFBs)) has proven a more stubborn challenge for proposed, new, and existing medium to high density living.
Space constraints, limited bin access, high turnover of residents, and the risk of contamination are some of the key challenges for organics recycling in Australia’s ever densifying and vertically growing population centres.
The problem
Organics in landfill break down anaerobically (without oxygen) to generate methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. Methane is 28 times more “carbon forcing” (powerful in causing climate change) than carbon dioxide. As such organics in landfill generates about 3% of Australia’s total greenhouse emissions.
Households generate about 30% of total food waste and most of this ends up in landfill at present. This equals around 2.5 million tonnes of food waste per year.
High Density, Higher Stakes
MUDs make up a growing share of Australia’s housing landscape, especially in cities like Sydney and Melbourne. According to the 2021 Census, approximately 30% of dwelling across the country were made up of townhouses (13%) and apartments (16%).
With organic waste accounting for more than one-third of municipal solid waste (MSW) sent to landfill, getting MUDs on board is essential if we’re serious about hitting national greenhouse gas (and waste diversion) targets.
Driving change is a mix of policy, development principles, and innovation.
NSW Sets the Bar
Early this year, the NSW Government passed the Protection of the Environment Legislation Amendment (FOGO Recycling) Act 2025, which requires all councils to provide FOGO collection to every household, including those in apartments and other multi-unit dwellings, by July 2030[i].
To help councils meet this deadline, the state has committed $81 million through its FOGO Fund. Importantly, $4 million of that is reserved specifically for tackling the unique challenges of MUDs. That funding supports everything from installing new bins and kitchen caddies to producing multilingual signage and running hands-on workshops in apartment complexes.
Supporting the push towards designing for not only FOGO, but effective waste management principals overall are changes to planning measures such as BASIX (NSW) and Sustainable Design Assessments (Vic) that now include provisions to encourage or require waste planning, which includes organics diversion infrastructure.
Moreover, in February 2025, the NSW EPA released the NSW Guide to best practice FOGO which serves as a “step-by-step guide for NSW councils to introduce FOGO kerbside collection services. It includes an overview of a best practice system and how to implement it from planning to ongoing delivery.” The guidelines also contain guidance and spotlight case studies on the implementation of FOGO services in MUDs and RFBs.
While this represents a positive contribution to the transition to FOGO, ongoing support will be required leading up to the 2030 deadline to ensure effective outcomes are achieved for MUDs.
This is more than just a bin drop. Councils are learning that the key to success in MUDs is long-term commitments in implementation and community engagement. That means offering education and training and often offering tailored solutions to individual buildings.
Introducing FOGO without proper community engagement has led to some spectacular own goals (including one council with 6,000 people on a Facebook page called “We hate the *** FOGO service”) and contamination rates of 20% plus. Getting engagement right, matters.
Thinking Outside the Bin
So, what does a good FOGO program look like in MUDs and RFBs? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this golden question is – It depends. The obvious solution for a new high-rise tower is plainly different from a 1960s two storey walk-up. Answering this question is unilaterally the most common dilemma shared by council waste managers tasked with figuring out their new FOGO service.
So, let’s begin with the basics. Everything starts with a small benchtop caddy provided to residents, complete with compostable liners and clear instructions on use.
From there, food scraps are transferred to shared organics bins in a secure bin room located on each occupied level or in a centralised room on the ground floor or basement. Some modern MUDs are introducing dedicated chutes for food bags or designing for waste chutes to allow for both Waste and Food with a selector button and high-speed diverter.
Existing developments face a more complicated challenge. Solutions can include reconfiguring bin space within existing bin rooms/enclosures or adding organics bins in an accessible location (such as communal open space or garden). Of course, effects on amenity must be kept front of mind.
MRA assists councils and project owners across the development sector, and we have seen a wide range of approaches.
Councils have played with different bin sizes, variable collection days, special services, dedicated Food Only collections, weekly and fortnightly collections, larger and smaller residual bin sizes and the like. Councils in other countries have allowed Insinkerators as an alternative collection system. Many water authorities are stridently against in-sink food processors as they put more pressure on the sewerage system.
Where council services may not be available or the systems required are beyond council scope of delivery, then private operators may have a solution.
This can include small vehicle collection trucks, on-site composting and dehydrators, automated “return to base” signalling of bin fullness, weight-based sensors and variable pricing arrangements that incentivise diversion and capture of food waste.
While physical infrastructure is important, engagement and behaviour change, is no less so.
Effective and realistic engagement includes:
- Providing easy access to tailored, multilingual resources and workshops to educate residents about separating food waste
- Clear, visual signage on how to separate waste at source – including site specific instruction on how to engage with the waste management system
- Ongoing support from councils for site waste champions, and strata/owners’ corporations
- Coordinating regular audits to track participation and contamination.
We need to get the infrastructure and the engagement right to achieve:
- higher organics capture rates
- lower contamination rates
- happy residents.
(What would also help, across the board, is a standardised recycling system for the whole country. Agree on what is and isn’t accepted in each bin, and make it the default across Australia. But this is a discussion for another day).
Some Lessons from the Early Movers
Established services in Penrith, and Lake Macquarie regions, and pilots across key metropolitan Councils have shown that when FOGO is done right, even in apartments/MUDs and other dense urban settings, contamination rates can be as low as 2%.
The trick is to make FOGO feel easy, worthwhile and not forced.
That means effective education including a clear message around the benefits of FOGO programs like cleaner waste rooms, fewer odours, contribution to sustainable outcomes such as slowing Climate Change and greenhouse gas emissions.
Some early movers have adopted “opt in” services (residents or even buildings opting in or out of FOGO services). This can reduce contamination rates.
Others have adopted a “Two Step dance” approach (MRA term). That is, deferring any changes to the red bin collection frequency or size, until the FOGO system is embedded and working well. Some have deferred red bin changes for a year or two.
Many early adopted have offered free compost to residents as an engagement exercise.
Some buildings are using access cards to track and improve compliance.
Many councils are supporting neighbourhood-level composting hubs to both engage with residents and reduce the need for bin storage at the building itself.
Looking Ahead
FOGO in MUDs will always be challenging – for policy makers, project owners, developers and residents.
High turnover of residents means education must be ongoing and tailored.
Building infrastructure (especially older buildings) will continue to challenge a “one size fits all” approach.
Food capture rates will always be lower in MUDs than SUDs.
But what we have learnt already is that well run programs do not have to have higher contamination rates and can deliver significant food capture.
With legislation in place, dedicated funding on the table, and engagement by communities to embrace the change, organics recycling in MUDs is moving from pilot projects to permanent practice.
It will enter the Australian zeitgeist, in the same way that the recycling yellow bin has become part of who we are and what we do.
As more residents learn to separate their food scraps from their rubbish, the country takes another step toward a more circular, more sustainable future.
[i] NSW Govt, Protection of the Environment Legislation Amendment (FOGO Recycling) Act 2025 No 1
MRA has extensive experience collaborating with both local councils and private developers across the development sector. Our team has firsthand experience addressing the complex challenges associated with organics recycling in developments of all manner of scope and scale. From small-scale infill projects to large master-planned communities, MRA provides strategic guidance and practical solutions to ensure sustainable waste management outcomes are achieved in a cost effective manner, in line with regulatory requirements and environmental best practices.
Mike Ritchie is the Managing Director at MRA Consulting Group.
James Cosgrove is a Principal Environmental Consultant at MRA Consulting Group
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