recycling

Recycling your food waste

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If you live in England, then from the 31st March 2026, your local authority will need to collect your food waste every week.

Now, you might be reading this and thinking ‘hang on, my local authority already collects my food waste every week’! And many do, including our local authority, Calderdale Council. Indeed, we’ve been able to recycle our cooked and uncooked food waste every week since we moved into our current house ten years ago.

But many don’t at present – City of York Council currently tell you to consider home composting. Which, to be fair, my parents have been doing for years. But this is limited to uncooked food waste, such as banana skins, eggshells and vegetable peelings. Better than nothing, and it means my parents have a good supply of compost, but all their cooked food waste just goes to landfill with their general waste.

The problem with food waste in landfill

Food waste in landfill is especially bad. When food rots in anaerobic environment (like a landfill site), it can be broken down by bacteria into Methane. Methane, as well as being the main component of the gas that we use for central heating boilers, is a greenhouse gas. If you think back to GCSE Science, you may know that Methane’s chemical symbol is CH4, which is four hydrogen atoms bonded to a carbon atom, so Methane contributes to carbon emissions. There was a landfill site not far from my grandparents’ house in East Yorkshire, and at night, you could see blue flames where the Methane released from the rubbish was being burnt off.

It’s also worth noting that local authorities have to pay landfill tax, which gets passed onto council tax payers. The less waste goes to landfill, the less landfill tax is paid, so local authorities also have a financial incentive to encourage recycling.

How food waste recycling works

Once your local authority rolls out food waste recycling, you’ll typically get three things:

  1. A large, kerbside food waste caddy
  2. A smaller kitchen food waste caddy
  3. A supply of food waste bags, to go in the kitchen caddy

You can then put all your food in the waste bag in your kitchen caddy. When the caddy is full, seal up the waste bag, and put it in your kerbside caddy. Then, leave the kerbside caddy out for emptying on your assigned recycling collection day. Finally, feel smug that you’re reducing your carbon footprint.

What happens to food waste when it’s recycled

I mentioned home composting earlier, and I’m sure my parents will carry on composting their uncooked food waste as they’re both keen gardeners. But from next April, or earlier, they should be able to have their cooked food waste recycled as well, and this will also be composted – just not by them at home.

Instead, the food waste typically goes into a big, industrial composting unit, to make compost on a commercial scale. Usually this involves heating the waste to around 70°C to speed up the process.

I mentioned Methane and how it’s the main component of the gas we use for cooking and heating. Some food waste may be converted to Methane gas deliberately, but in a controlled way that allows that gas to be collected as bio-gas. That can then be used like mains gas is, or burnt to generate electricity. I’m not a big fan of this, as it’s still a carbon-based fuel, but at least it’s being done in a controlled and sustainable way.

Getting all of England on board with food waste recycling will hopefully reduce the amount of waste going to landfill overall, reduce our carbon emissions, and provide sustainable sources of compost and bio-gas. It’s going to require cash-strapped local authorities to invest in recycling schemes, but the benefits to the environment are clear.

Recycling

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Metal sheep

Now that we live in a house, rather than a block of flats, Christine and I are back to regular collections of waste in recycling. In the flats, we had access to a bin store where we could dump rubbish at any time, and this was collected by the council at regular intervals. For a time, we also had recycling bins for glass, paper, metals and plastics, although these were removed. Sadly our fellow residents were not so good at sorting their waste and our local council took the bins away due to contamination with non-recyclables. In the meantime I had to take our recyclables to our local supermarket to dispose of.

For waste from our house, our local council collects our wheelie bin every two weeks. Historically all councils have collected waste weekly but many have switched to fortnightly collections – a controversial stance that central government were opposed to. However, we still have a weekly recycling collection; in other words, one week only recyclable will be collected, and the next week all waste will be collected.

This suits us quite well, as a lot of our waste can be recycled. We’ve got into the habit of separating our waste before we dispose of it and so it only takes a few minutes each week to put these into the relevant bags or boxes and put them out for collection. As well as metals, paper, glass and plastic bottles, our council will collect food waste and textiles each week.

Separating food waste from regular waste, to me, is really important. Food waste can usually be composted, and it’s the main cause of bad smells and flies in regular waste, so it’s good that this can be collected weekly. We get a small caddy for the kitchen, and then a larger box to put out to collect, along with a series of green biodegradable bags.

Whilst we’re just a household of two people, for now at least, because we can recycle most of our waste, we manage not to fill our wheelie bin, even after two weeks. And, as an extra incentive, our local council offers entries to a monthly prize draw to those who put out their recycling every week, via a sticker with a QR code on our recycling box.

Recycling and sustainability are key at my workplace as well and we’re actively encouraged to recycle as much as possible, rather than simply chucking things in the bin. To this end, all offices have recycling bins within easy reach; you just have to think for an extra moment about which bin is appropriate for any given item.

It’s with this in mind that I read this piece on recycling in the New York Times. It makes some interesting points, but is very much focussed on the situation in the US, and not here in the UK. The US is a much bigger nation with more landmass available for landfill sites, and no tax on landfill. Here in the UK, we’re a significantly smaller island with a much higher population density, and more opposition to landfill sites which are more likely to be in someone’s back yard. Consequently, we have landfill tax to make recycling more attractive and cost-effective than simply dumping waste in big holes in the ground.

I’m happy to do my bit to reduce our household’s waste and footprint, and I’m pleased that my local council gives me this opportunity.