Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis was among those to witness the launch of the Food Organics and Garden Organics waste service at the Cimitiere Street lot.

Mr Georgiadis, who also attended the market’s Plastic Free July awards in August, said it was pleasing to see Harvest take another sustainable step forward.

“You’ve got to bring the community along for the ride with a change like this,” he said.

“It’s all very well to say people need to behave a certain way, but you can’t turn everything on its head at once.

“The great thing about this market is it has grown organically, and this latest step definitely puts the war on waste front and centre.” 

The launch of the FOGO bins comes after the market conducted a waste audit of materials from its bins.

Of the 53.69 kilograms of waste composing of 2003 litres, the audit found that 94 per cent of the volume and 89 per cent of the waste was compostable.

Harvest manager Caroline Williamson said while the installation of FOGO bins made sense, market-goers were still getting used to them.

“We’ve had some volunteers from the Commonwealth Bank come and help direct people about where to put their waste, because there has been a little bit of confusion,” she said.

“The general message is that if they are not sure, they should put it in landfill.”

FOGO is available to residents of Launceston for a one-off payment of $65.