MAOP is the Mount Alexander Organics Partnership. It’s a group of local organisations, businesses, experts and individuals who are passionate about processing our food scraps and garden cuttings locally, so we can benefit our soils, grow great food and build a strong community in the process.

Members include:

Greenaway, Grow Great Fruit, Hillside Acres Farm, Carr Enviro, YIMBY Compost, Local Community Compost Alliance (LOCCAL), Fruit Fetish Farm, Mount Alexander Sustainability Group, The Hub Foundation, Let Me Be Frank, Andrew Butt, Bill Grant. 

If you are interested in joining the partnership please email us at hello@maorganicspartnership.aution text goes here

We have developed a three-year plan that will test whether we can successfully process our food and garden organic locally. We plan to:

• expand YIMBY

• support home composters

• trial on-farm composting 

• trial kerbside chipping and

• support Greenaway to continue to process green waste.

We have funding for the first year and we’re excited to get going!

We have formed as a community-based partnership, separate to Council. However we are keen to have Council support this work in whatever capacity they can.

We have the same objectives – to find the most effective, affordable and sustainable system for managing organics across the Shire while not undermining existing community efforts.

Agreeing to delay the decision to roll out a FOGO service until September 2027 would be a key supportive step by the Council. Undertaking genuine discussions with MAOP on the merits and risks of our current proposal is also welcome.

What we learn in the next year through this trial will help Council have a clearer picture of what’s needed in our Shire and whether FOGO is part of that or not. It will also bring the community along on the journey, ensuring greater awareness and support for whichever model Council ends up endorsing.

FO-GO = Food Organics and Garden Organics. A FOGO bin is a green-lidded bin provided by some councils for both food scraps and garden cuttings. 

The Victorian state government has a target to reduce organics to landfill by 50% by 2030 and encourages Councils to do this by rolling out a FOGO bin system.

FOGO is one solution, but not the only one. While we support FOGO where it’s needed, the data suggests we are already doing a great job of keeping organic waste out of landfill in this shire through Yimby, Greenaway and very high levels of home composting. We are already doing better than lots of LGAs that have FOGO bins.

Furthermore, we have strong local support for testing a local system properly before the shire commits to a long term FOGO contract.

For these reasons we want to trial a comprehensive whole of shire approach which is independently reviewed each year in order to make sure we are on target to reach the State Governments target by 2030. At each yearly review our Councillors would have the option to implement a FOGO system if that was deemed necessary.

Visit our Get involved page.