Food waste recycling service

• grass clippings
• small garden prunings from shrubs and trees (offcuts, roots, tubers)
• palm fronds, twigs, small branches, leaves and loose bark
• weeds, ivy, creepers and vines (including noxious weeds as the recycling process destroys seeds within the final composted material).

• cat litter
• animal droppings
• general waste
• glass
• plastic - all types (e.g. plastic bags, compostable bags, wrappers, containers)
• packaging
• cardboard
• clothing and other fabric
• food
• metal (e.g. cans, kitchen appliances, pots, pans)
• logs, large branches, or stumps wider than 10 centimetres
• paper - all types (e.g. paper towel, tissues, deli paper, newspaper)
• rocks and stones
• soil
• timber - all types (e.g. construction materials, wooden furniture, offcuts)
• bamboo
• bioplastics.

The food waste recycling service will be paused from 1 July 2024.

Council will continue its commitment for a clean and sustainable city but needs to better understand the complexities of providing a food waste recycling city-wide service. Council will continue to promote the green waste recycling service, to ensure that we are providing not only the best value services for our customers, but sustainable ones as well.

All food waste can still be collected with your food waste caddy and be used at home in your own home compost bin or worm farm or be taken to your nearest Community Composting Hub. If composting at home or in the community is not an option, food waste should go in the general waste bin. 

Only green waste, like lawn clippings and pruning’s, are placed into your green waste recycling bin. Find out more. 

No. Your green waste recycling bin will still be collected on the normal fortnightly schedule. To find out what day your green waste recycling bin is collected visit our bin collection calendar available online or on the free Brisbane Bin and Recycling app.

Residents who have already received a food waste caddy are encouraged to keep and continue to use the caddy for their own at home composting or worm farming or to transport food scraps to their nearest Community Composting Hub. The caddy supplied by Council is made from recycled materials. If the caddy breaks it can be recycled by placing it in your yellow recycling bin.

Council provides the Compost Rebate Program and the Community Composting Hubs. Program to help residents compost at home or in the community.

Option one - Reducing waste and increasing recycling to create a clean and sustainable Brisbane starts at home. Learn more about avoiding food waste in Brisbane and simple changes you can make to save money.

Option two - There are many resources available for Brisbane residents to learn more about food waste avoidance and the simple changes you can make at home to save money and reduce waste. Find tips and tricks on how to plan, prepare and store your food to help reduce the volume of food waste going to Brisbane landfill each year.

We will continue to regularly monitor and assess food waste disposal in Brisbane to determine the best path forward for a food waste recycling service. In the interim, we will continue to invest in our other food waste initiatives and trials such as our rebates for home compost bins and worm farms, and our rebates for in-sink food disposal systems and food waste dehydrators.