From November 2025, Council has committed to deliver weekly FOGO to 2270 more households across the Balhannah, Charleston, Lobethal, Oakbank, Woodside townships in the Tuesday collection area.

From Tuesday 4 November 2025, East Waste will begin collecting the green-lidded organics bin collections weekly and blue-lidded waste collections will move to fortnightly. Yellow recycling bins will continue to be collected fortnightly.

Since October 2023, 400 Woodside households have already been serviced with weekly FOGO and fortnightly landfill bin collections.

Using the current collection service, compostable material accounts for almost 40% (by weight) of blue bin contents. Council is committed to improving environmental sustainability and diverting waste from landfill, aligning with State Government landfill reduction targets.

The green organics bin service turns green waste into nutrient rich compost that helps to improve soil quality, it creates more employment opportunities than landfill options, and it also reduces our exposure to the landfill levy.

Background

Along with our Waste Management partner East Waste, we ran a 12-month food organics garden organics (FOGO) trial across three areas in Woodside. The trial commenced in October 2023 and involved changes to weekly collection of FOGO and landfill bins.

The aim of the bin service change was to decrease the amount of waste going to landfill and improve our environmental performance by increasing FOGO bin collection to weekly and reducing landfill bin collection to fortnightly.

Results from the initial trial, and from other councils’ trials, demonstrate significant decrease in green waste materials appearing in blue bins and an increase in materials diverted from landfill. Woodside township properties in our trial increased their landfill diversion rate from 60% to 77% (just above South Australia’s target for 2025)

To find out more about the initial Adelaide Hills Council trial:

70% of Woodside township trial participants supported the weekly FOGO and fortnightly waste collection service continuing. At the 15 October 2024 Council meeting, the Elected Members resolved that the properties within the Woodside township trial area will remain on the more sustainable bin service

Benefits of a weekly FOGO service:

Whilst there are many positive outcomes of implementing the FOGO service, the key benefits are:

• reduced smell from the green bins by weekly emptying
• increased food recycling rates (as evident by our earlier trial)
• residents get 13% (or 100L) more bin capacity each fortnight
• reduced greenhouse gas emissions (from less food rotting in landfill)
• helps grow the circular economy in South Australia through the processing and return of nutrient-rich compost back to our agricultural and backyard soils
• supports more local jobs; FOGO processing requires 6.1 full-time jobs per 10,000 tonnes vs only 2.8 for landfill

How we are communicating with households:

Council is distributing a series of letters to property owners ahead of these changes.

Kitchen caddies, compostable liners and an information booklet will be delivered to all households in the townships of Balhannah, Charleston, Lobethal, Oakbank and Woodside that receive a green FOGO bin collection on Tuesdays.

Events to share information about weekly FOGO will be held across the Tuesday bin collection area. You can see a list of the dates and times by viewing the "Information Sessions" tab below.

Participate in one of these events for your chance to win vouchers for local businesses.