Forums Forums Local News More Bins

The Government are making it compulsory for Councils to recycle food waste within the next two years. Trials have been at West Kirby and New Brighton.

I really can'r see how this makes any sense whatsoever, I can't think of one positive thing about it. The cost of collecting, processing and distributing the end product in terms of finance and/or ecology just doesn't stack up whatsoever. Perhaps with commercial food firms (cafe's through manufacturers) but definitely not domestic.

Thinking about our food waste I think it has amounted to a dozen egg shells in the last two weeks. I simply don't buy food that I am going to throw away, why would you?

The previous time this was trialled the food waste was put in the garden waste bin but it was decided it was unsafe to compost meat that way and cancelled.

Slightly related, somebody dumped about a dozen chicken carcasses at Egremont Beach the other day, they were spilling out of a heavy black bin bag on the seawall lower ledge.

I agree. It's crazy. I assume we will have those silly little brown bins that only hold an old cabbage or equivalent.

Having mentioned this before, living on a main road, when the wind blows even the large bins get blown over and sometimes onto the edge of the pavement. The food waste bins are likely to be blowing all over the road.

Taking that into account, who will be responsible for any accidents incurred, the council, the refuse company or the occupant of a home ?
There could be a deluge of insurance claims, and if council have that sort of money to waste, so be it !

We remember the problem of the top heavy trees that after too much rain with saturated ground, fell in gales and went into the roof of a car, and the terribel tragedy related.

Always lack of council due care and attention and with no listening ear.

We used to have it in Southport. I was the only person in our street to bother, and even then it was mainly teabags. It was cancelled in 2019.

https://mysefton.co.uk/2019/06/06/food-waste-collection-service-suspension/

IIRC you had a small worktop bin and then put it into a larger 30 bin

Hi GIbbo.

I suppose people might throw the old food out into the garden instead of messing around with bins.. a great way to increase the rat and urban fox population !
If they didn't, what did they do with it other than put it inthe general waste bin ? It seems somewhat defeating the purpose. I think I'd throw mine out for the foxes. There's already plenty of them around here, we also have seagulls nesting on the roof tops. They'd enjoy a good meal.

It appears this has been triggered by a UN target (SDG 12.3), to half global food waste by 2030. Our UK target for 2025 was to reduce food waste by 20% which we most likely achieved easily.

I'm not convinced that collecting food waste significantly reduces food waste although obviously recycling helps mitigate it, that shouldn't be the preferred solution.

Non-edible UK food waste (shells, kernels, skins, peelings, waste fat/oil, sprouts etc) is about 30% of our total food waste .

UK domestic food waste is roughly three times the amount of our other food waste (manufacturing, hospitality sector etc).

Since 2018 there have already been quite large reductions in UK domestic food waste.

The figure I haven't found is how much domestic food waste is already recycled domestically (composted, fed to creatures etc), I know people that collect food waste from friends etc to compost it.

I'd hope chemical tests will be performed on the composted food waste although I don't see how this can be performed, its not as easy as checking water purity. Some toxins (to humans and/or plants) don't break down easily when composting, this could be opportunistic for terrorists to cause widespread poisoning or crop destruction. It would be safer to collect the methane then landfill the rest, we already recycle our sewage into the food chain which has to be a disaster waiting to happen.

This gets even better, Wirral getting a grant of £2.4M but expects first year costs to be £3,3M and second year £3M for food waste collection. They are buying 15 more 12 tonne food waste bin lorries for this service at a cost of £2.06M.

I'm not sure if 12 tonne refers to capacity or gross weight, a normal bin lorry is 26 tonne GVW with 12 tonne capacity. Food waste bin lorries normally only have a capacity of about 3.5 tonne.

Yet again the Government forcing unfunded requirements on Councils while limiting their income, straight out the book "The Idiots Guide to Bankrupting Councils".

How big are these bins, for many with small kitchen spaces it may be a problem but also what weight will they hold and will people like myself who are getting on a little, with health problems cope?

If you have any physical problems that make it difficult to manoeuvrer bins you can register and the bin men knock on your door to assist you - means you have to be up when they come!

No idea on the "caddy" size for the kitchen nor the food recycle bin, tie-able bin liners are used. I don't know if liner is caddy liner or bin liner. There is obviously no obligation to use the supplied caddy, as long as your food ends up in the the food recycle bin you can do it how you like.

There may be no legal requirement for you to recycle food, all the wording I have seen puts an obligation on the Council to provide a method of collecting food waste, not the householders to provide it. I'll look into this further when I feel the impassible need to do so.

The only person I know that has to do this is my sister in law in Scotland, the bin they have to put out is about 24 inches high and about 12 inches by 10 inches, it has a white plastic bag inside which the binmen remove and replace with a new one. Their binmen come about mid day so it can be put out that morning, our binmen come about 6.50 am, we all put our bins out the night before, Mr Fox is going to have a field day, I'm sure their bins have a push down lid.

Now doing a trial on collecting recycling clean flexible plastics like bags etc. This is while heavy items like microwave ovens, computers and other metal items have no collection facility and routinely go to landfill.

A recycling company would probably pay the Council to be licensed to collect items like computers, microwaves and metals placed beside bins on collection day.

Hi diggingdeeper, thank you for your reply and the helpful information.
Kind regards