Register your interest in sending us your organic food waste for treatment, and find out how your business could save costs while reducing greenhouse emissions.
This service is one of the ways we’re transforming Melbourne’s sewerage system from a linear waste disposal system to a circular resource recovery and re-use system – addressing the challenges of climate change to ensure our region is resilient and future-ready.
Our service
We’re enabling businesses in the Greater Melbourne area to directly send their high-strength liquid organic food waste to our Western Treatment Plant in Werribee. This waste cannot be disposed of down sewers, and is typically sent to landfill or distant processing centres.
Under our service, the waste is added via a dedicated facility to the sewage treatment process, and digested by microorganisms to form biogas. Biogas can be used on site to generate alternative energy – reducing emissions and pressure on limited landfill capacities, and supporting the evolution to a circular economy.
Accepted waste types
The types of organic waste we currently accept include:
- food processing waste
- dairy waste, e.g. cheese whey
- animal processing waste (excluding pig waste)
- Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) sludge
- de-packaged spoilt liquids
- process upset liquid wastes
- brewery wastes
We are currently unable to accept:
- solid food waste
- fats, oils and greasy wastes
- non-organic waste – for example, plastic, glass, metal – or hard materials such as shells, bones and tree branches
- waste contaminated by antiseptic, antibacterial and other antimicrobial agents
- toxic or hazardous materials
- packaged waste
We are continuously assessing our ability to accept a wider variety of organic wastes in the future.
Benefits for businesses
Like Melbourne Water, many Victorian businesses have committed to significantly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
Our organic food waste treatment offers an affordable, sustainable and convenient solution that can help:
- reduce direct greenhouse gas emissions associated with some disposal methods during the treatment process
- reduce business operating costs – with no landfill levies, competitive pricing and a convenient location close to the Princes Freeway in Werribee
- keep costs low for our services, by using organic waste to power the Western Treatment Plant rather than purchase electricity from the grid.
Register your interest
Complete our online form to discuss your business’s current and future waste treatment needs, or keep informed about future food waste treatment opportunities.
Register your business interest
Supporting Melbourne’s sewerage strategy
Our organic food waste treatment service increases our capacity to treat and re-use waste: a core objective of the Melbourne Sewerage Strategy. Through the strategy, Melbourne’s entire water sector is working with the community and regulators to transform Melbourne’s sewerage system to a circular resource recovery and re-use system.
The strategy acknowledges the interacting challenges of climate change, population growth and urbanisation alongside:
- the changes in sewage composition
- new technologies
- the need for infrastructure upgrades
- the necessity of evolving our systems towards resource recovery.
This requires a flexible and transparent approach to planning to ensure our city is future-ready and continues to thrive.
To learn about our initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint and generate more renewable energy, read about our path to net zero.
Contact us
For more information about this new service, email [email protected].