06 October 2009

Some local authorities are beginning to get their act together as far as food waste recycling is concerned. Mind you let's not produce it in the first place is the way to go. Stirling council’s weekly Waste Recycling Collection is expanding to include food waste.

Over the next couple of weeks residents in Bridge of Allan, Cornton, Causewayhead, Raploch and Cambuskenneth will soon be able to recycle food and will be issued with a new food waste collection starter kit.  This will be put inside their blue box during their normal bin collection.

The kit is a small gray caddy which comes with compostable bags and a leaflet explaining how to recycle food waste.  This project has already been done in the Riverside area of Stirling and has been a success. Any left over food such as peelings, meat, bones, fish, bread and plate scrapings are placed inside the caddy.

The caddy is then put inside the kerbside recycling box and placed out every week as usual along with other recyclables for collection. The caddies are then emptied into a specially designed covered container on the back of the vehicle and the food is then sent to a licensed waste treatment contractor for composting.

Feedback has been very positive from residents in the Riverside who have been using the caddies since January.

David Hopper Stirling Councils waste manager said in the local weekender paper “It is a conventional way to have food waste collected every week. It also stops an average of 2kg of food waste per week from a participating household from going to landfill.

If only half of the households across the Stirling Council area regularly used a food waste caddy, this could result in around 38 tonnes per week (1900 tonnes per year) diverted from landfill.”

When food waste is buried in the ground, it slowly rots, producing methane gas and other harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.  Introducing the food waste collection can only benefit the local environment and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

I read this article in the local free weekender newspaper, for further information on the food Waste Recycling service is available on line.

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