Councils to miss food waste collection deadline

Only two of 13 councils in Yorkshire will meet the deadline to collect food waste from households by 31 March.

Eight of these local authorities, including the whole of South Yorkshire, were granted a transitional agreement by government, allowing a much later start date for the service.

Calderdale is the exception; the council's bin crews have been collecting food waste from households for 17 years.

Every week, the refuse collectors take all the recycling at once in a special multi-purpose lorry.

Jack Ford has worked on bin lorries for eight years. He said most residents were now good at sorting their waste.

"Sometimes they throw food waste in the bin without using these green plastic bags that we provide and we have to knock on the door and have a word. We always encourage people to tie the bags up as it stops animals from getting in and eating it."

Once the food waste is collected from the 98,000 homes in Calderdale it is taken to a ReFood UK, an anaerobic digestion facility in Doncaster where it is broken down by micro-organisms to produce the renewable energy, biogas, and fertiliser.

Maria L'ala from ReFood UK said: "It works in a similar way to the human stomach.

"We eat food and natural bacteria in our gut will digest it, the body will naturally emit a gas and we just capture it in a much bigger scale."

Councillor Danielle Durrans is Cabinet member for public services and communities at Calderdale Council.

She said: "We collect all recycling weekly and people are brought along if you make it as easy as possible. We have really good residents in Calderdale who want to make a difference to the environment."

According to the charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) on average, a person in the UK wastes food equivalent to three meals per week.

Food waste makes up a third of what goes into a general bin, and a kitchen caddy full of food waste can generate enough electricity to fully charge a tablet five times.

Hull City Council is due to bring in food waste collection from 1 April. Two thirds of the East Riding Council area will get weekly food waste collections this month, with the remaining third moving to weekly food collections in February next year.

Bradford is set to start weekly food waste collections in September.

Leeds is trialling a new combined garden and food waste collection service around the Wetherby and Collingham areas soon.

North Yorkshire, York, Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster, Wakefield and Kirklees councils have transitional agreements with the government and will start food waste collections in the future.

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