The NSW Government is awarding approximately $11 million in grants to boost food and garden organics recycling and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
NSW Environment Protection Authority Head of Organics Amanda Kane said that every year in NSW, more than a million tonnes of food and garden waste ends up in landfill. The grants are part of $105.5 million dedicated to diverting organics waste from landfill through the Waste Less, Recycle More initiative.
Related stories:
- Inner West Council’s food organics programs
- Sacyr’s organics recycling plant: south-east Melbourne
- Improving Melbourne’s waste collection solutions
- NSW Govt boosts organics collection funding by $4.9M
Ms Kane said that through the initiative the EPA is able to provide support to councils, the waste industry, not-for-profit organisations and businesses to keep food and garden waste out of landfill.
“This includes supporting projects that increase food donation to people in need, boost new kerbside collection services, provide education on food waste, develop new markets and invest in new organics processing infrastructure,” she said.
“Already through the initiative $44.3 million has been awarded to 90 projects to increase processing capacity for food and garden waste in NSW by 430,000 tonnes a year.”
The grants are being awarded through three programs:
- $9,766,235 is being awarded to 16 projects through the Organics Infrastructure Large and Small grant program for new infrastructure to build or expand organics waste facilities, increase processing capacity and fund new equipment, like refrigerated vans and freezers, to enable food relief agencies to collect more donated food.
- $765,076 will be shared between 10 not-for-profit organisations and local councils through the Food Donation Education grant program to collect and redistribute good quality surplus food to people in need, helping divert some of the 200,000 tonnes of food waste from business, that ends up in landfill in NSW each year.
- $633,445 is being awarded to six projects through the Organics Market Developmentgrant program to increase the markets for compost in NSW.
“Waste Less Recycle More is the largest waste and recycling funding program in Australia with a total of $802 million in funding, managed by the NSW EPA, in partnership with the Environment Trust.”