Where did your leftovers go this Christmas?

Around 230,000 tonnes of food ends up in the bin over the Christmas period – that’s equivalent in weight to 4.6 million whole turkeys ending up in the bin.

This waste often ends up in landfill, contributing to harmful methane emissions but, with separate food waste collections, leftovers such as turkey, sprouts and Christmas pudding could all be recycled and turned into compost for local parks or used to create energy to heat homes.

New research from Defra shows that 78% of people support having a separate food waste collection to enable recycling of food and two thirds of households said they used their separate food waste collection. Over 4,000 households around the country were surveyed and 92% of people who frequently use their council’s food collection said they found it easy to use. Around a third of local authorities now provide food waste collections for their residents.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced earlier this year that Defra was exploring potentially banning some materials such as food from landfill entirely; options will be published in the New Year.

Commenting on the research, Mr Benn said:

“How can it make sense to feed our landfill sites with our Christmas leftovers every year when we could be recycling them and turning them into something useful? Our latest research is very encouraging as it shows that separate food waste collections are definitely working in the areas that are using them, and more importantly, people are happy with them. We would like to see all local authorities collecting food waste as soon as possible and by 2020 at the latest.

“It’s not about making it more difficult for everyone to sort out their rubbish, and we’ll be using the evidence from this research plus the experience of the areas introducing or extending food waste collections under the funding announced by WRAP, to help us make decisions on the next steps.”

The Government also recently announced that £1.3 million will be split between eight local authorities to enable more separate food waste collection through WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme).

08 January 2010