Red bin collection locked in ahead of FOGO roll out in Singleton

Published on 21 February 2025

Urban households in Singleton can choose to opt in to a weekly red lid bin collection—for an extra cost—as food organics is added into the green bin kerbside collection services across the local government area from 30 June 2025.

After considering four options to determine the frequency of the red lid bin collection as part of the FOGO roll out, Singleton councillors resolved at their first meeting of the year to introduce the service to all properties utilising the urban and rural split.

This will see rural properties move to a weekly green bin and fortnightly red and yellow bin collection, while urban properties will move to a weekly green bin and fortnightly red and yellow bin collections but with the option to pay an increased domestic waste service charge for a weekly red bin collection.

With the introduction of FOGO, both food and garden organics will now go into the green bin which will be collected weekly from 30 June 2025 for both urban and rural residents.

Aaron Malloy, Council’s Acting Director Infrastructure + Planning said FOGO was the biggest change to kerbside waste services in a generation and it was important that residents could nominate what worked best in their household.

Proposed annual costs for the urban and rural collections for 2025/2026 are $675 for the default fortnightly red bin collection, and $860 for the weekly opt-in red bin collection for urban residents.

“FOGO has been the highest priority for local waste services across the State since the NSW Government mandated that all councils must provide a FOGO collection to reduce organic waste in landfill and boost recycling efforts by 2030,” Mr Malloy said.

“Singleton has joint contracts in place with Maitland and Cessnock councils for the processing and collection of organics, and we are working together on a public education campaign to help make the transition as easy as possible for our communities.

“However, we’ve seen from the 61 councils across NSW where FOGO kerbside collections have already been introduced that there’s been some backlash about changes to collection frequency and the size of red bins during the rollout of the service.

“Our bin sizes will not change, but Council’s decision to give our urban households the choice in how often their red bin is collected by opting in for a weekly service will empower our residents to decide what suits their needs, how much they want to pay, and how they can reduce waste going into landfill by taking up new services.”

According to the NSW Environment Protection Authority, FOGO will help to divert half a million tonnes of organics from landfills across the State every year by 2027, saving councils money on landfill fees and creating a nutrient-rich compost for use in landscaping and agriculture.

Mr Malloy said that on average Singleton Council collects 6,000 tonnes of residual waste from the red bin annually and that the most recent bin compositional audit conducted by Council indicated that food and kitchen waste accounted for a quarter of this waste.

“We know that responsible waste management is important to our community, and we consistently see our households’ commitment to recycling and sustainability initiatives through positive results that have reduced the volumes of our landfill,” he said.

“While FOGO is a big change, we’re confident that by providing support, easy-to-understand information and—most importantly—choice, the transition will be hugely successful for our community.”

More information about the FOGO service in Singleton, including delivery of a bench-top caddies and liners to make collecting food/kitchen waste easy, will begin to roll out to residents prior to 30 June 2025.

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