Queensland has retired its numeric PFAS limits for compost. The department's composting page now says so. Its formal position statement on the same subject, still in the policy register, carries the old numbers. The paperwork is still catching up.
That gap sums up where PFAS and organics sit right now. The rules are moving, the science is still settling, and councils keep getting the same question from residents and councillors: is what comes out of our green bin safe?
The honest answer depends less on composting technology than on three decisions councils make themselves.
Composting doesn't make PFAS. It concentrates whatever arrives. Most of the weight lost during composting is water, with some carbon dioxide, and how much is lost depends on how wet the material is going in and coming out. PFAS leave with neither. Some PFAS go further: a 2024 US study of food waste compost found that compounds carried in on packaging and other inputs can convert during composting into the persistent forms that testing picks up, so measured levels can rise as the compost matures. Either way, the useful question is what arrives at the gate.
The NSW EPA sampled 18 composting facilities: 13 taking food and garden organics (FOGO) and five taking garden organics (GO) only. Two PFAS compounds, PFOA and PFHxA, were significantly higher in FOGO compost than in garden-only compost. The report didn't pin down the source, but the obvious difference between the two streams is what households put in the bin alongside their food scraps.
Packaging is the prime suspect. When the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation tested 74 fibre-based food packaging samples from its own members, nearly half had fluorine levels indicating PFAS had been added deliberately. That's the moulded takeaway bowl, the paper burger box and the grease-proof bag, and some of it carries a "compostable" label. The voluntary phase-out of PFAS in food packaging is still being worked through. There is no PFAS standard for the wrapper, and the national packaging reform that might have set one has stalled. In September the federal government shelved the mandatory national packaging standards it signed up to in 2023, telling industry no new Commonwealth packaging scheme would be introduced this term. Recyclers and the waste industry have been openly critical.
Biosolids, and any material from a site with a firefighting foam history, carry larger risks of their own. They deserve a separate decision, not a quiet inclusion in a general organics contract.
What makes far less difference is the equipment. You may see compost covers and plant marketed as "PFAS-free". That's a reasonable preference when buying, but it isn't where the PFAS in your compost comes from. If it's in the product, it came in through the gate.
The Queensland Government has confirmed that the Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation will no longer apply numeric PFAS limits as a condition of composting environmental authorities. In their place: the general environmental duty, referencing the national PFAS soil investigation levels for residential land with gardens, which operators are expected to meet at least 75% of the time, averaged over a year. Alongside that, the department is developing a voluntary feedstock monitoring program with industry, starting with green waste, to find out which materials actually carry the risk.
Don't read that as the risk going away. The duty still sits with whoever runs the activity, and through ownership and contracts that often includes the council. Testing and a documented feedstock management plan remain exactly the evidence a regulator will ask for. What has changed is that there's no longer a single pass/fail number to rely on, or to be protected by.
In July, Western Australia's Waste Authority narrowed its kerbside FOGO guidance to food, garden organics and certified compostable caddy liners. Compostable cups, containers and trays, tissues, paper towels and food-soiled cardboard now go to general waste. WA's stated reason was practical: a kerbside system can't reliably tell certified compostable packaging from look-alikes. It also keeps the items most likely to carry PFAS out of the compost.
Bin rules are entirely in council's hands. So is how clearly they're explained, and whether anyone checks with regular bin audits. The cheapest PFAS control available to a council is a short, clear list on the bin lid.
Most councils contract out processing. If PFAS appears in that contract only as "comply with all applicable laws", the council has handed over the risk and the information along with it. A contract can require:
That last point isn't theoretical. In WA, PFAS was detected in compost from the Bunbury Harvey Regional Council facility in May and October 2024. Regulators traced it to the feedstock, including FOGO. The facility stopped taking FOGO in December 2024. Nineteen months later, at the end of July, one neighbouring shire was still sending FOGO from about 7,500 households to landfill while it negotiated to truck the material to Perth, an option another South West council had already ruled out as "unviable and cost prohibitive". Residents kept sorting their food scraps. The landfill got them anyway.
The NSW risk assessment made a point that gets less attention than it deserves: where compost ends up matters as much as what's in it. The highest-risk pathway it modelled was compost spread on the surface of pasture grazed by dairy cows, with PFAS reaching people through milk. When the same compost was worked into the soil, the calculated risk for the key compounds fell below the level of concern.
Councils influence end use more than they often realise: through their own parks and gardens, through what they buy back, and through what their processing contract says about markets. Product heading for food production, and grazing land in particular, warrants the most care and the best data. Matching the product to the end use does more than any single number on a certificate.
Garden organics carry the lowest PFAS risk of any common feedstock. For a council that hasn't started FOGO, that's one more reason to get the garden organics system, the markets and the contract right first, and then add food. Adding packaging-heavy streams before the controls are in place means importing the problem first and managing it later.
The organics industry didn't create PFAS, and councils can't test every pizza box. But councils do control the three decisions that do most to determine how much PFAS ends up in compost: what goes in the bin, what the contract requires, and where the product goes. None of them needs new technology. All three can be in place before the next contract is signed.
Not sure where your council stands? Try our free 10-question PFAS controls self-check. It takes about five minutes and nothing is stored.
If you found this useful, or it raised questions about your own council's arrangements, I'd be glad to hear from you. A conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. And if you're reviewing your FOGO bin rules, or have an organics processing contract up for renewal in the next few years, now is the time to write these controls in.
Email support@radiclecompost.com.au, or send me a message on LinkedIn.
Sources: Queensland Minister for the Environment and Tourism, letter to AORA (2 Sep 2026); DETSI, Composting regulation in Queensland (updated 25 Sep 2026); DETSI regulatory position statement ESR/2024/6783 v1.02; NSW EPA, Risk assessment of PFAS and PBDEs in FOGO and GO composts (Jan 2023); Timshina et al., Waste Management (2024); APCO, Phasing out PFAS from food contact packaging; ABC News (8 Sep 2026); Environment Ministers Meeting communiqué (18 Sep 2026); Waste Authority WA kerbside FOGO guidance (Jul 2026); DWER via South Western Times (15 May 2025); Shire of Capel (25 Jun 2026); Shire of Augusta-Margaret River (30 Jul 2026). Earlier article: PFAS: The Forever Chemical Already in Your Bin.
Martin Tower is the founder of Radicle Compost, an independent, technology-agnostic organics recycling advisory. He has 25 years' experience in composting and organics processing across Eastern Australia.
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