Organics Collections grants program

Purpose

This is a $10 million program (previously the Local Government Organics Collection Systems grants program) which supports kerbside food organic and garden organic (FOGO) waste being collected from households and businesses to reduce the amount of this waste going into red-lid bins. By introducing or expanding green-lid bin services, providing kitchen caddies and educating new behaviours, this program supports communities to redirect FOGO waste to organics processing facilities.

The Organics Collections grants program complements our Organics Infrastructure (Large and Small) grants program Stream 1 Organics Processing Infrastructure as the supply of FOGO waste from these kerbside collections can go to organics processing facilities being constructed.

This program is being delivered through a partnership between the NSW Environmental Trust and the NSW Environment Protection Authority under the Waste Less, Recycle More. Additional information can be found on the EPA website.

Funding

Business stream

Introduced in 2018, grants of between $10,000 and $500,000 were available to cover up to 50% of costs relating to organics collection services to businesses. The food waste collected had to be currently landfilled and the collection service had to transport source separated commercial and industrial food waste to a licensed treatment facility to be converted into a higher quality resource such as compost or electricity.

Household stream

Grants of up to $1,300,00 were available for organics collection services to households including multi-unit dwellings. For example, introducing a new kerbside organics bin collection service that did not previously have a kerbside organics bin, or expanding kerbside organics collection services to include multi-unit dwellings.

Trial of organics collections services in multi-unit dwellings could also be funded but the trial had to be for a minimum of 8-months of collection.

Part of this grant (up to $100,000) could be used to fund an education and communication plan which was required by all applicants to incorporate into their project. 

Who can apply?

Both streams (business and households)

Grants were available to:

• NSW councils (as defined in the NSW Local Government Act).
• Regional Waste Groups, Regional Organisations of Councils or Joint Organisations of Councils who could apply or coordinate projects on behalf of one or several NSW councils within their regional group, provided each council nominated a contact person for the project.

Business stream only

Grants were also available to:

• Waste and recycling collection providers.
• Large businesses with multiple premises in a small geographic area where each site is generating large quantities of food waste.
• Property owners and managers who control the waste and resource recovery services to commercial or mixed residential and commercial premises.

Joint grant applications were encouraged, and some examples included:

• Councils working with their waste service provider to establish a way of promoting and coordinating commercial waste collections as part of existing household collections.
• Councils working together to facilitate regional solutions.
• Large waste generators and commercial property owners working with waste service providers to establish new long-term organics separation and collection systems.
• Waste service providers working with Bin Trim assessors (from the EPA) that have carried out a waste assessment and developed an action plan for a business.