Food Waste Recycling

Recycling your food is quick, clean and easy with your new weekly food waste collection service.

How do I use the food waste service?

Your new food waste collection service is really easy to use.

Households with individual waste containers - Simply store your kitchen caddy inside and begin to fill with food waste, when this is full transfer your food into the outside food caddy and begin again. Your outdoor food caddy will be collected at the same time as your rubbish, so please make sure both are presented for collection before 7am.

Households with shared waste containers - Find somewhere suitable to house your kitchen caddy. Line your kitchen caddy with one of the complimentary liners or newspaper and start filling with food waste. Please do not use plastic bags. When your kitchen caddy is full transfer the contents direct or tie the liner/newspaper and simply drop it in your brown outside food waste container located in the same place as your shared waste containers.

To keep your caddies clean remember to keep good hygiene by washing regularly with soap and hot water. You can use compostable caddy liners if you wish or you can use newspaper or kitchen roll instead, however you do not have to line your caddy. Please do not use plastic bags.

Why do we need to separate our food waste?

Food is an excellent resource which often goes to waste. Food makes up over one third of our rubbish and this is currently sent to landfill which is not sustainable. When food rots in landfill it releases methane, a gas that is 23 times more potent at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Recycling your food can reduce these nasty greenhouse gasses and save money and natural resources.

Food facts:

• The UK sends 16 million tonnes of food waste to landfill each year
• Food waste in landfill releases the equivalent emissions of 1 in 5 cars on our roads
• In the borough we waste enough food to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool 22 times
• 1 tonne of food waste recyled through Anaerobic Digestion saves 1 tonne of Carbon
• If the average borough household recycled all of their food waste it would produce enough energy to boil 464 kettles a year

How is my food waste recycled?

Once your food has been collected it is taken away to a new composting digestion plant being built in Oxfordshire and turned into fertiliser for local farms and renewable energy for the local area. Through this process your food goes towards creating enough electricity to power 4,200 homes and saves just over 10,000 tonnes of carbon per year.

What are compostable caddy liners?

The borough does not endorse any particular brand or supplier of compostable liner, however, if you are intending to purchase caddy liners please check they are 100% compostable and have the seedling logo (see image), these are generally made out of corn starch, potato starch or paper and are certified BS EN 13432:2000.

Some plastic bags may be sold as biodegradable, but this does not mean they are compostable and will not break down quickly enough during the composting process, some can take many years and leave fragments of plastic.

Compostable caddy liners are available to purchase from supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose and many local retailers are now stocking them. Please do not use plastic bags.

Tips for recycling food waste

Monitor your food waste - including items that pass their use by dates.

You may want to put your house name or number on your outdoor food waste caddy so we know where to return it and does not get misplaced.

Review your spending - could you save money once you are more aware of how much food you actually throw away? For practical advice on how to reduce food waste, visit http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

How do you rate this information/service?