City councils pledge food waste recycling by April

City councils in Devon are promising they will deliver food waste recycling for all residents by April 2026.

Currently there is no food waste recycling service in Plymouth with more than half of residents in Exeter having access to the service.

In other parts of the county, such as east Devon, food waste recycling has been available since 2012.

In an overhaul of the recycling system the government has said all councils will be legally required to offer food waste recycling to everyone by April 2026.

In Exeter 58% of residents have access to the food waste recycling service according the Labour-run city council's portfolio holder for city management, Ruth Williams.

Plans for food waste collections were first announced in 2019 but there have been several delays with the council citing the Covid pandemic and a shortage of drivers among the reasons.

Exeter City Council announced an £8m investment in infrastructure in March 2024 to enable the rollout of food waste recycling across the city.

Williams said the council was delivering the service in-house to save money and, with new collection trucks ordered, was now on track to meet the deadline.

She said: "We're rolling it out stage by stage because that way we can provide the optimum service at the best price."

The leader of the Green Party on Exeter City Council, Diana Moore, said the introduction of food waste recycling in the city had taken far too long.

She said: "The waste that is not recycled and can be, goes to incineration, and that's bad for air quality and bad for our health and it costs the council a lot of money.

"We've been told it's going to be completed by next April - every single home including all the flats in the city centre - are going to have food waste recycling and they must stick to that promise."

The government previously said it wanted to end the "postcode lottery" of bin collections in England "whereby councils collect different materials for recycling, causing confusion for households".

Plymouth City Council is spending nearly £2m from a government grant mainly on vehicles and containers to enable food recycling across the city.

The council will have to provide caddies to all 123,000 households and shared communal bins to 29,000 flats and shared houses.

In the latest report on the plans the council said "depending on procurement timelines, the service is realistically expected to launch sometime in the spring of 2026".

The food waste will be treated in an anaerobic digestion site to produce renewable energy and slurry for fertilizer.

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