Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) Facility

Funding: $4.2 million for early planning

Planning is underway for a large-scale Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) facility in the ACT. The new facility will be located at Hume.

Overview

A FOGO processing facility will allow a FOGO service to be rolled out to all ACT households. The facility will be able to process 50,000 tonnes of material per year. It can expand up to 70,000 tonnes per year to meet future demand.

The facility will divert food and garden organics from landfill and reduce greenhouse gases by turning food scraps and garden waste into valuable compost.

Community benefits

• At full scale, the facility may produce 28,000 tonnes of compost each year to go back into the parks and gardens across Canberra or the surrounding regions
• reducing harmful greenhouse gases by turning food scraps and garden waste into valuable compost for the soil
• building the building a circular economy and meeting the National Waste Action Plan targets for halving organic waste sent to landfill in the ACT by 2030
• generating up to 15 direct jobs, as well as additional indirect employment opportunities.

Project features

• a receival hall to pre-sort the food and garden waste
• an enclosed composting tunnels to compost the material, providing aeration, temperature and moisture control
• biofilter to filter out small particles from the air which produce odour so that clean air is emitted
• enclosed maturation building where the composted material will further stabilise (mature) before being screened and further refined into finished compost products
• onsite administration building.

Community engagement

The new FOGO facility requires the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The EIS considers all the environmental, social and economic impacts associated with the proposal and ensures any adverse impacts are avoided.

From May to June 2023 the ACT Government talked with the community and stakeholders ahead of preparing the EIS.

Feedback was considered in preparation of the draft EIS which was notified for public comment from 29 January to 12 March 2024. The draft EIS is currently being revised.

Please visit the planning website for more information and draft EIS documentation.

Reports and publications

• FOGO Engagement Report (PDF 619.6 KB)
• Food Organics and Garden Organics facility fact sheet (PDF 4.8 MB)
• Aerial image of proposed Food Organics and Garden Organics site (PDF 10.3 MB)

Stay up to date

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• Email the project team at InfrastructureCanberra@act.gov.au