New South Wales generates 1.7 million tonnes of food waste a year, about 70 per cent of it still edible, and since 1 July 2026 restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars above the bin threshold have had to separate food waste from general waste. Skai Solutions read the threshold properly, and the number that decides whether the rule applies to your venue is not a tonnage at all: it is 3,060 litres of weekly general waste capacity.
Most writing about restaurant food waste is either a national statistic nobody can act on or a list of tips. This page is neither. It sets out what the New South Wales rule actually requires, where the line sits, what the waste is already costing you before any regulator is involved, and four fixes ordered from free to expensive. It also says plainly which part of the problem answering the phone does and does not touch.
From 1 July 2026, businesses in New South Wales that sell or handle food have to separate food waste from general waste. It applies to restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars, and it is staged: the obligation lands first on the largest waste producers and reaches smaller sites later. That reporting comes from Hospitality magazine on 5 May 2026, drawing on the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority, and the EPA's own business food waste page is where you check your own site.
The penalties are not nominal. The maximum penalty is A$500,000, with A$50,000 per day for a continuing offence, and on the spot fines of A$5,000 can be issued. Those are the figures reported when the reform was announced, and they are the reason this stopped being a sustainability conversation and became an operations one.
The reason the state moved is capacity rather than sentiment. Landfill space in Greater Sydney is expected to run out by 2030. A commercial and industrial waste audit in 2023 found that a quarter of all New South Wales business waste going to landfill is food waste that could be recycled, and that food waste is the biggest single waste material sent to landfill across almost every business sector.
What can go in the food waste bin is broader than people expect: any food, compostable plastic kitchen caddy liners that comply with Australian Standards, and fibre based liners such as newspaper. The EPA's own advice is to talk to your existing waste collection contractor about suitable bins rather than sourcing them yourself.
Stage one applies to a site with a weekly general waste capacity of six or more 660 litre bins, or 16 or more 240 litre bins, or any combination of bins greater than 3,060 litres.
Here is the part nobody writes down, and it is arithmetic you can do yourself from those three published tests. Six 660 litre bins is 3,960 litres. Sixteen 240 litre bins is 3,840 litres. The combination test bites at 3,060 litres. So the three tests are not equivalent, and a venue running a mixed fleet of bin sizes is caught at roughly 23 per cent less capacity than a venue running six 660s, and roughly 20 per cent less than one running sixteen 240s. If your bin bay is a mixture, which most pub and bistro bin bays are, you are closer to the line than the headline bin counts suggest.
| Test | Weekly capacity it represents |
|---|---|
| Six or more 660 litre bins | 3,960 litres |
| Sixteen or more 240 litre bins | 3,840 litres |
| Any combination of bins over 3,060 litres | 3,060 litres |
The bin counts are the published stage one tests. The litre totals in the right hand column are our multiplication of those counts, shown so you can check them.
Two honest cautions. First, the test is written as weekly capacity, not as a bin count on a given day, so if your bins are emptied more than once a week you should confirm with your waste contractor and the EPA how your capacity is counted before you assume you are under the line. Second, secondary summaries of this reform circulate a stage one figure of 3,840 litres rather than 3,060. The 3,060 litre combination test is what was reported in May 2026. Check your own capacity against the EPA page, not against an article, and that includes this one.
The threshold above is written as a capacity, 3,060 litres of general waste a week, which is not a number anyone keeps in their head. Convert it to bins and the rule becomes something you can check by walking out to the yard.
| Bin | Collections a week | Weekly capacity | Against the 3,060 litre line |
|---|---|---|---|
| 240 litre | 12 | 2,880 L | Under |
| 240 litre | 13 | 3,120 L | Over |
| 660 litre | 4 | 2,640 L | Under |
| 660 litre | 5 | 3,300 L | Over |
| 1,100 litre | 2 | 2,200 L | Under |
| 1,100 litre | 3 | 3,300 L | Over |
Bin volumes are the standard Australian commercial sizes. The weekly capacity column is Skai Solutions' own arithmetic against the 3,060 litre threshold in the New South Wales rule, not a figure published by the regulator.
Commercial waste is not priced like a household bin, but the claim that there is nothing published to look up is wrong, and we had it wrong on this page until 7 October 2026. Two kinds of schedule exist. Some councils publish a commercial waste price list alongside the domestic one, and national contractors publish a per-collection rate card. Here are both, so you can see what your own quote should be in the neighbourhood of.
| Service, weekly collection | Annual charge | Per collection over 52 weeks |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial 240 litre garbage | A$615.00 | A$11.83 |
| Commercial 360 litre garbage | A$914.00 | A$17.58 |
| Commercial 660 litre garbage | A$1,690.00 | A$32.50 |
| Commercial 240 litre recycling | A$375.00 | A$7.21 |
| Commercial 360 litre recycling | A$511.00 | A$9.83 |
| Commercial three bin service | A$1,300.00 | A$25.00 |
Camden Council, Fees and Charges, Waste and City Presentation Services, Commercial Waste Management, read 7 October 2026. GST is marked as not applicable on these charges. The per-collection column is Skai Solutions' arithmetic, the annual charge divided by 52. This is one council of 128 in New South Wales alone and schedules differ enormously, so read it as a published example and then read your own council's.
The private side, for comparison. One national Australian waste contractor's published rate card, read 7 October 2026, for weekly general waste collection, excluding GST. We do not name the company, because a vendor's own price list is a market observation rather than a source, and a price with no date on it is a false claim about the market.
| Bin | Advertised per collection, ex GST |
|---|---|
| 240 litre wheelie | A$13.50 |
| 660 litre wheelie | A$25.70 |
| 1,100 litre wheelie | A$35.10 |
| 1.5 cubic metre front lift | A$45.50 |
| 3.0 cubic metre front lift | A$91.00 |
| 4.5 cubic metre front lift | A$136.50 |
Advertised rates read 7 October 2026, excluding GST. The council figures above are GST free rather than ex GST, so the two tables are close but not strictly like for like.
Put the two side by side and the useful finding appears, and it is not the one you would guess. On a 240 litre bin the contractor is cheaper, A$13.50 against A$11.83 council, which is near enough the same. On a 660 litre bin the council charge works out at A$32.50 a collection against A$25.70 from the contractor, about 26% dearer. So the bigger your bin, the more a private contract is worth shopping for, and the venue with one small bin is wasting its time on the exercise. Many venues in strip shops and shopping centres cannot choose at all, because the landlord or the centre contracts the service and bills it through outgoings, which is a line worth finding on your own lease before you ring anybody.
Now the threshold from the section above, priced. New South Wales stage one separation catches a site generating six or more 660 litre general waste bins a week. At the advertised A$25.70 a collection that is A$154.20 a week, about A$8,018 a year on general waste alone, before a single organics bin is added. That is Skai Solutions' arithmetic on the rate above, and it is the number to hold next to the levy figures that follow, because the levy is charged inside it.
What you can also look up is the single biggest input into any of those prices, and it is a government charge that rises every year.
The NSW waste levy is charged per tonne at the landfill gate. Every tonne of general waste your contractor takes to a Sydney landfill carries it, and it is passed through to you whether your contract is priced per bin, per lift or per month.
| Financial year | Metropolitan Levy Area, per tonne | Regional Levy Area, per tonne |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-27, from 1 July 2026 | $180.20 | $103.80 |
| 2025-26 | $174.20 | $100.30 |
| 2024-25 | $170.10 | $97.90 |
NSW Environment Protection Authority, waste levy areas and levy rates, read 24 September 2026. The Metropolitan Levy Area covers Sydney, the Illawarra, the Hunter, the Central and North Coast to the Queensland border, plus the Blue Mountains, Wingecarribee and Wollondilly.
Two things in that table are worth arguing with your contractor about. The first is the trend: the metropolitan rate is up 5.9 per cent in two years, and the 2026-27 increase was set at the Consumer Price Index. A waste budget written in 2024 is already short. The second is the geography. The same tonne of restaurant waste carries $180.20 in Sydney and $103.80 in the regional area, a 74 per cent difference on identical waste. A multi site operator comparing waste cost per venue is often comparing levy zones rather than performance.
The levy is the one part we still cannot convert into a figure per bin lift, because doing that honestly needs the weight of your waste and not its volume. Restaurant waste density varies enormously with how much of it is liquid, glass or flattened cardboard, and no regulator publishes a hospitality density figure. Ask your contractor for the tonnage on your last four invoices, multiply by the rate above, and you will know what share of your bill is a government charge you cannot negotiate and what share is the contractor's, which you can.
The practical consequence for the separation rule in the section above: the levy is charged on general waste going to landfill. Waste diverted into a separate food organics collection is not going to landfill, so the levy is the mechanism that makes separation cheaper rather than dearer, once the second bin is in place. That is the part of the rule most operators have not been told.
Two things fall out of that table and both surprise operators. The first is that the line sits at capacity, not tonnage, so a venue that fills its bins loosely crosses it sooner than a venue that breaks boxes down, on identical waste. The second is that collection frequency alone decides it: the same three 1,100 litre bins are over the line collected weekly and under it collected fortnightly. If you are close to the line, the contract with the waste company is the document that determines whether the rule applies to you, not the kitchen.
Separating food waste also means a second stream and a second bin, which is space in a yard that usually has none. That constraint, rather than the cost of the service, is what most venues run into first.
A waste contractor quotes you a price per bin per lift. Inside that price sits a state tax on every tonne that reaches landfill, and it is the line that has moved. The New South Wales waste levy for 2026-27, applying from 1 July 2026, is A$180.20 a tonne in the Metropolitan Levy Area and A$103.80 a tonne in the Regional Levy Area. The EPA sets it by regulation and lifts it with the Consumer Price Index, so it is not something a contractor can negotiate away and not something you can shop around.
| Year | Metropolitan Levy Area | Regional Levy Area |
|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | A$138.20 | A$79.60 |
| 2020-21 | A$146.00 | A$84.10 |
| 2023-24 | A$163.20 | A$94.00 |
| 2025-26 | A$174.20 | A$100.30 |
| 2026-27 | A$180.20 | A$103.80 |
NSW EPA, waste levy areas and levy rates, read 22 September 2026. The metropolitan figure is the Sydney Metropolitan Area and the Extended Regulated Area, which the EPA publishes at the same rate.
Read the first and last rows together: the metropolitan rate has gone from A$138.20 to A$180.20 in nine years, up 30.4%, which is Skai Solutions' arithmetic on the EPA's own table. That is the reason your bin bill keeps rising while your collection schedule has not changed, and it is why every credible projection of landfill cost points the same way. The EPA says plainly that landfill disposal cost is expected to rise significantly.
The practical consequence for a Sydney venue is that general waste is now the expensive stream by law and separated food waste is the cheap one, because organics do not go to landfill. A venue sending a tonne a month of mixed waste to landfill is paying about A$2,162 a year in levy alone at the 2026-27 metropolitan rate, before the contractor's own charge for the truck, the bin and the labour. Separating the food fraction is the only lever on that number that does not involve trading less.
The fine is the smallest number on this page for most venues, because the waste was already expensive. It arrives in two places, and neither of them is the line on your bill that says waste collection.
The first is food cost. Anything binned was bought, so it sits inside your cost of sales and quietly lifts your food cost percentage above where your menu was priced. If you have never tied the two together, the method is on our guide to restaurant food cost percentage, and what it does to the bottom line is on restaurant profit margins in Australia.
A worked example, with the inputs shown so you can change them. Take a venue buying A$8,000 of food a week. If 4 per cent of that is binned rather than sold, that is A$320 a week, or A$16,640 a year. At 6 per cent it is A$480 a week and A$24,960 a year. Those are our figures, not a survey: substitute your own purchase number and your own measured waste rate and the arithmetic is the same. The point is that a percentage point of waste on a normal food spend is worth more than the collection contract that carries it away.
The second is disposal itself, and it is going one way. The EPA's position is that the cost of sending waste to landfill is expected to rise significantly given how limited the remaining capacity is. A venue that separates food waste is not only complying, it is moving volume out of the stream whose price is rising fastest.
One, free: separate and weigh for a fortnight before you buy anything. Put the food waste in its own container and weigh it at close. Two weeks is enough to tell you whether your problem is prep waste, plate waste or spoilage, and those three have completely different fixes. Buying equipment before you know which one you have is how venues end up with an expensive machine and the same weekly loss.
Two, cheap: fix the forecast, not the bin. Prep waste is a forecasting error made the day before. Prep is bought and cut against expected covers, and expected covers come from the bookings you actually hold. Every booking that was never captured, and every one that was captured and never turned up, is prep that gets thrown away. That is the part of the problem the phone touches, and it is covered further down.
Three, moderate: put the caddies where the waste is made. The EPA's own starting advice is practical rather than strategic: bins and buckets close to where food waste is generated, which means at the bench and at the dishwasher rather than out in the bin bay; bin sizes small enough that somebody will actually carry them; wheelie bins where the space allows; and signage at the bin bay and on the caddies. Separation fails on the walk, not on the intention.
Four, bigger: on site processing. The EPA suggests venues consider equipment that collects and processes food waste on site, on the basis that it is more convenient and reduces collection frequency. This is the only item on the list with a capital cost, and it should be last, because its business case depends entirely on the weight you measured in step one.
One upstream fix that is easy to miss: orders taken accurately the first time do not come back as remakes. That is part of the case made on our page about an AI phone ordering system for takeaways.
Then the honest answer is that you have a different problem, and it is worth naming which.
If your waste is mostly trim, bones, peel and stock scraps, no behaviour program will fix it, because that waste is a function of cooking from raw and you presumably do not want to stop. That is a waste contract and processing conversation, not a training one. If your waste is mostly plate waste, your portions are wrong for your room and the fix is on the menu. If your waste is mostly spoilage, your ordering cycle is longer than your product life and the fix is smaller, more frequent deliveries even at a slightly worse unit price.
And if the issue is purely that you sit above the threshold, the cheapest move is usually a conversation with your waste contractor about right sizing the general waste bins rather than buying anything. Reducing general waste capacity is a contract change. It is worth pricing that before anything with a plug on it.
Partly. Waste tracks the gap between what you prepped and what walked in, and a missed booking is a cover you prepped for and never served. How Skai Solutions keeps those bookings on the book is set out on our AI receptionist page.
On one axis, and it is worth being precise rather than overselling it. Over prep is the waste category that responds to better information about who is coming, and that information comes from bookings. A booking that never gets made because the phone rang out during service removes a cover from tomorrow's forecast. A booking that is made and never honoured leaves the prep in place with nobody to eat it, which is the same loss arriving from the other direction, and the size of that problem is set out on our page on restaurant no shows along with whether a no show fee is worth charging.
The honest limit: this is a slice of a food waste problem, not the whole of it. Spoilage, over ordering and trim are usually larger, and none of them care how the phone is answered. If your two week weigh in says prep waste is a small share of your total, fix the larger share first and come back to this.
Where Skai Solutions fits is narrow and specific. It answers every call, including several at once, so booking enquiries during service stop going to an engaged tone, and it confirms the bookings it takes so tomorrow's cover count is a number rather than a guess. Setup is five days. If your phone is not losing calls, this is not your problem and you should spend the money on the bins.
Fifteen minutes, your own menu and your own booking questions.
Book a Free DemoWaste leaves a venue through the drain as well as the bin, and both are metered. What a restaurant water bill costs sets out the trade wastewater quality charge that rises 7.1 times when grease trap pre-treatment is not maintained.
A good share of avoidable waste is a timing decision rather than an ordering one. The 2 hour 4 hour rule is the one that decides whether a tray can go back in the fridge or has to be binned at close.
The largest single waste event in most venues is not daily trim, it is one failed refrigerator. See what to do when a commercial fridge stops cooling for the six causes in order of cost and the rules on what has to be discarded.
Not yet. The obligation started on 1 July 2026 and is staged by how much waste a site produces, with stage one aimed at sites holding six or more 660 litre bins, 16 or more 240 litre bins, or any bin combination above 3,060 litres of weekly general waste capacity. Smaller sites are brought in later, so a cafe under the line today should expect to be caught eventually.
The maximum penalty reported is A$500,000, with A$50,000 per day for a continuing offence, and on the spot fines of A$5,000 are available. Check the EPA's own page for the current position before relying on any figure quoted second hand.
Commercial bins come in 240, 660 and 1,100 litre sizes, and the size matters less than the number of lifts a week, because capacity is volume multiplied by collections. Three 1,100 litre bins collected weekly is 3,300 litres and over the New South Wales line; the same three collected fortnightly is 1,650 litres and under it. Work out your weekly capacity from the contract, not from what is standing in the yard.
Largely because of the state waste levy on everything sent to landfill. In New South Wales that levy is A$180.20 a tonne in the Metropolitan Levy Area for 2026-27 and A$103.80 in the Regional Levy Area, up from A$138.20 and A$79.60 in 2017-18. The rate is set by regulation and indexed to CPI, so it rises whether or not your collection schedule changes.
Any food, compostable plastic kitchen caddy liners that meet Australian Standards, and fibre based liners such as newspaper. Ordinary plastic bin liners are not acceptable, which is the single most common way a food waste bin gets contaminated and rejected.
About 1.7 million tonnes a year, roughly 70 per cent of which is edible. A 2023 commercial and industrial waste audit found a quarter of all business waste going to landfill in the state is food waste that could have been recycled.
It reduces one part of it, the prep bought against covers that did not arrive. It does nothing for spoilage, trim or plate waste. Weigh your waste for a fortnight before deciding which of those you actually have.
More operating guides are in the Skai Solutions guides library, including restaurant occupancy cost and food safety supervisor requirements.