Food and green waste bins

Food waste makes up approximately 43% of Darebin’s kerbside household waste sent to landfill. Introducing food waste recycling is one of our biggest opportunities to quickly reduce carbon emissions.

If everyone with a food and green waste bin in Darebin recycles their food waste, we can save 9,000 tonnes from landfill and 17,800 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

This is the same as taking 6,130 cars off the road each year. It will also save on costs. The average Victorian household throws away $2,200 worth of food a year.

Your food and green waste is taken to the Veolia organics recycling facility in Bulla. The facility transforms the waste into compost, mulches and soil products, which are used right here in Victoria for agriculture and horticulture.

• Use any airtight container such as a kitchen caddy, ice-cream container, or food container to store your food waste. Keep it somewhere easy to access, like on your kitchen bench or under the sink, so it’s close to hand when cooking or clearing up after meals.
• You can line your caddy with newspaper or paper towel and, if you’re worried about smells, sprinkle some bi-carb soda.
• Empty the food waste into your food and green waste bin. Make sure your food waste goes in loose without any bags.
• Put your food and green waste bin out for collection. It will be collected every fortnight, alternating with your recycling bin

• Fruit and vegetable scraps
• Food scraps (cooked or uncooked)
• Dairy products and meat products (including seafood, eggs, bones)
• Bread, pasta, rice, cereal and other table scraps
• Coffee grounds (no used coffee pods or capsules please)
• Loose leaf tea (no teabags)
• Small amounts of newspaper or paper towel (used to wrap loose food; no tape or ties please)
• Grass clippings
• Small garden prunings
• Twigs and small branches
• Leaves
• Flowers
• Weeds, ivy, creepers and vines

• Liquids (e.g. cooking oil, milk)
• Plastic bags, even if labelled compostable or biodegradable
• Plastic wrapping (e.g. cling wrap)
• Household garbage • Nappies, even if labelled compostable or biodegradable
• Soil, pebbles and rocks
• Treated or painted timber
• Pet droppings
• Cat litter, even if labelled compostable or biodegradable
• Teabags
• Syringes
• Textiles
• Oily pizza boxes

No. Plastic bags (even if they’re compostable or biodegradable) cannot be put in our green waste recycling bins – plastic contaminates compost. Use a sheet of newspaper or paper towel to wrap your food instead, if needed.

Council’s food waste processor (Veolia) do not accept compostable/biodegradable bags. Biodegradable/compostable products, including caddy liners, do not break down in the system used at the facility.

Veolia use an in-vessel composting process, which is rapid and results in a shorter turn-around time and less heat than other commercial systems. Veolia have advised that this means biodegradable and compostable products are still intact at the end of processing and can be seen in the end product. This makes the compost product unattractive to farmers, as it is not possible to distinguish between these materials (which may eventually break down over time) and regular plastic.

Other Councils who send food waste to Veolia also do not accept compostable products due to the way they break down.

• To minimize odour layer lawn clippings and other garden prunings between food scraps.
• Keep your food and green waste bin in a shady area and make sure the lid is kept closed.
• Particularly smelly foods like seafood and meat scraps can be kept in the freezer and taken out on bin night.
• If there are food scraps left in the bin after collection, hose it down and let it dry in the sun.

• Keep the lid closed
• Try to keep bin in the shade
• Some insects are expected however if you keep your bin clean you can avoid larger pests and vermin.

General waste bins are emptied weekly, and recycling and food and green waste bins are emptied fortnightly.

We consulted with the community in 2023 to consider any potential change and are currently working through the options. If there are any changes to the service, the community will be informed.

Refer to the above "Will the frequency of my bin collection change?" FAQ.

Council’s standard service for food and green waste is a 120L bin with a light green lid.

Yes, you can request a larger food and green waste bin on our website.

If you are a tenant in a rental property and would like a larger or extra food and green waste bin, you will need to contact the property owner or agent and ask them to make the request on your behalf.

Not at this time.

The State Government has mandated several changes to how Councils across Victoria manage their waste. This includes transitioning to four core waste and recycling services before 2027:

• Red lid bin: general waste
• Green lid bin: food and green waste
• Yellow lid bin: recycling (of plastics, metals, paper, cardboard: known as comingled recycling)
• Purple lid bin: glass recycling (providing centralised collection points for glass may also be an option.)

If you have, or you want, a 240L green bin, you will need to pay an extra fee for the larger green bin ($62 full; $41 concession).

No. All ratepayers receiving Council’s kerbside waste collection service must have a food and green waste bin.

Yes. You will need to pay extra for:

• Larger general waste bins
• Additional or larger food and green waste bins.

For more information and request different bins, you can ask for a new bin size.

You can use the service if your apartment block has a Council managed waste service. If your bins have a Darebin Council logo on them, you are currently receiving a Council service.

If you would like to share a bin between multiple apartments, please make a request by emailing mailbox@darebin.vic.gov.au.

Please ensure you let us know how many people live in your apartments.

Businesses, schools, body corporate representatives and commercial properties cannot access Council’s food and green waste service. We do not currently have the vehicles and services set up for these types of collections.

You can consider seeking a private food recycling service. For more information on a number of free and paid food recycling options, look for “Business organic waste recycling” on our website’s Sustainable business page.

For more information on composting go to our composting, bokashi and worm farms page.

Providing a food and green waste service to all households is an important part of the State Government’s Recycling Victoria reforms.

The State Government has introduced legislation that requires councils to provide a food and green waste bin to all households that receive council’s kerbside waste collection service.

In Darebin, food waste makes up about half of what goes in household general waste bins and gets sent to landfill. Expanding our food and green waste service means we can reduce waste to landfill across the municipality.

Council encourages residents to compost at home if they can, but there are some items you cannot compost at home, or put in worm farms, which you can put in the Council bins, including meat, bones, dairy, citrus, garlic and onion.

From July 2022 you would have noticed two separate charges on your rates notice: a kerbside waste collection fee and a public waste rate.

The kerbside waste collection fee covers not only Council’s food and green waste service, but also the general waste and recycling. This change represents Darebin joining the vast majority of Victorian Councils in introducing a separate waste service charge.

Visit this Waste Service Fee article to find out more about these changes. For up to date information, please get in touch with us at mailbox@darebin.vic.gov.au

Yes, Council consulted with the community when developing our Waste and Recycling Strategy in 2020.

Reducing food waste was identified as a priority for the community. We also consulted on our Council Plan 2021-2025, which included an action to increase food waste recycling through Council’s food and green waste service as priority action to reduce waste.

We consulted with the community about our kerbside general waste and recycling services again in 2023.

As part of the State Government’s changes to how councils across Victoria manage their waste, all councils must transition to four core waste and recycling services before 2027, including glass recycling.

You can pick up a kitchen caddy from the Preston Customer Service Centre.

You can also use any kind of container as a caddy. Suitable containers include lidded buckets, ice cream containers, large yoghurt tubs and Tupperware.

Yes, you can pick up a kitchen caddy from the Preston Customer Service Centre.

You can also use any kind of container as a replacement, including lidded buckets, ice cream containers, large yoghurt tubs and Tupperware.

All of the new food and green waste bins have a piece of technology called a radio frequency identification device (RFID) fitted in the lid.

This little RFID tag is an electronic version of the serial number printed on the side of your bin and we use this to identify which household each bin belongs to.

RFID technology consists of a tag on your bin lid and a reader.

Readers are used to scan the RFID tag and identify the bin’s serial number.

The tag itself does not measure or collect data – it only contains your bin’s serial number.

No. But we will continue to conduct our manual recycling bin checks which involve visual spot checks by our collection contractors.

We also conduct an annual bin audit of all our kerbside services, with 250 bins randomly selected from across the municipality for each waste stream, the contents of these combined bins are then sorted into categories. These are both standard procedures to monitor contamination levels and inform our education programs to help the community sort their waste correctly.

We do this because it’s Council’s responsibility to ensure what we collect and send for processing or to landfill is appropriate, for example, e-waste being sent to landfill is illegal. We can also be fined by our waste processors if our waste is contaminated, for example if our food and green waste is contaminated with plastic bags, glass, or general waste.

Our priority is also ensuring that we are on track to achieving a circular economy.

No. Darebin does not issue fines or increase the waste charge based on people putting the wrong item in the bin, or overfilling bins.