Can the inner Sydney suburb of Chippendale end food waste in 2024?

by Michael Mobbs

Each week for the last eight years in our footpath gardens we’re composting 300 to 400 kg of food waste. That makes about 30 or so kg of rich soil for about a thousand edible plants, fruit trees, herbs and trees.

Around 8,000 people live here in less than a square kilometre. Almost half the households have 1 person. At an average of $1,036 food waste for our 3,736 households, each year food worth over $3.8m goes into council garbage, and much more into hotel, café and university garbage bins whose property owners use independent garbage contractors. Our community worked with council to make the Footpath Garden Policy so anyone may garden in the footpath without council approval (except in the central business district).

Here, at 1.5 kg of carbon equivalent climate pollution per 1 kg of food waste, and over 345 kg of food wasted from each of the 3,736 households, we produce over 1.3 m tonnes of household food waste. Thus, we households put about 1.9m tonnes of climate destroying pollution into Earth’s air – each year.

Australia-wide there is institutional, personal and market failure to stop or reduce waste which is the third largest cause of Earth’s climate collapse.

What’s inspiring us is the wonderful success stories of waste reduction where markets in the US and other overseas places bring lower household bills.

Some 3,000 towns and cities in the US have ended or significantly reduced food waste and that’s brought behaviour change and significant reductions in other waste streams. 

In those places, if a householder does not put out food waste they don’t pay the garbage bills to their local authority.  

On its website the US EPA has lots of “Pay as you throw” success stories, case studies and guides from the states and towns that have mostly ended or reduced their food and other waste with user pays financial incentives.

We have user pays incentives in Australia but only if I don’t use mains electricity, gas, water or sewage services, or less fuel in a car or truck. Look at the success story where household solar energy is reducing or ending both household bills and use of climate polluting coal and gas.

But Australian household waste generally, and food waste in particular, doesn’t enjoy similar financial incentives or rewards.  Instead, garbage bills are fixed.

FOGO is an extreme example of citizens denied reduced financial payments in return for reducing their food waste. FOGO is a big win for waste companies, and a bigger loss for ratepayers and the environment.  “FOGO” is where households give their food waste to a council which gives it to companies which get more income by processing the food and other waste and selling it back to the households as compost or by selling or using energy they make from burning it. A national community composting body which supports communities such as ours may be of assistance to achieve our goal of ending food waste here by composting it in 2024.

Find out more

Listen to City Compost Network’s Podcast Episode 6: Sustainable Chippendale Street Compost