Keeping food waste out of landfill - the Council's next recycling challenge

11.42.40am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 12th Sep 2006

What can the Borough Council do to keep kitchen food waste out of the black refuse bags which go to landfill?

That was one of the questions discussed at last week's meeting of the Environment Scrutiny Committee when the Council's Recycling Action Plan was on the agenda. Cllr Liz Hogger, Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesperson, pointed out that over a quarter of every black bag put out by householders in the borough was actually waste food. When this goes to landfill it produces harmful methane, one of the gases responsible for climate change.

Cllr Hogger proposed that the Council should commit to a trial collection scheme of food waste for composting during 2007, then plan to introduce borough-wide collection by the end of 2007/8, providing there were suitable composting facilities available. Residents should also be helped to compost their food waste at home, using either green cones or wormeries. Cllr Hogger said "There is a big hole in the recycling action plan. It mentions the possibility of a small trial collection of food waste by April next year, but then there is nothing more until 2008/9. We should be more ambitious than that. Keeping food waste out of landfill is our next big recycling challenge."

However the Conservative majority on the Committee rejected the proposal to put borough-wide collection of food waste firmly in the Action Plan for 2007/8, instead agreeing that officers should simply investigate the costs of such a service. Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Hogger said "The Council has an ambitious recycling target of 60% by 2010. The whole point of the Action Plan is to commit to introducing the services needed to reach that target. I am disappointed that the Conservatives refused to show that commitment. But in fact we had a similar discussion about plastic recycling last year, when the Liberal Democrats proposed borough-wide collection by early 2007. The Conservative Executive rejected that, then did a

U-turn three months later. I shall hope for another Tory U-turn on food waste."

The Scrutiny Committee did agree Cllr Hogger's proposals to look for markets for other types of plastic apart from bottles, so that plastic such as yoghurt pots and margarine tubs could be recycled, and to promote the use of wormeries as well as green cones to encourage home composting of food waste. The Executive agreed to the Scrutiny Committee's recommendations at their meeting on 7 September.