Food waste to have its own recycle bin
June 2, 2009 at 1:32 pm
There have been a number of councils all over the country that have made the very brave decision to collect potentially mouldy substances from our homes. The bins are normally blue, which, together with the green ones for normal recycling and then the black ones for everything else, make our front gardens look like a cluttered rainbow of bins.
This month sees South Oxfordshire announce that as of June this year residents will have to think twice before chucking eggshells in the bin. The local council seems very excited about the prospect of a greener area thanks to the new bins, but it would be fair for some of the residents to be slightly anxious about the way in which the collection is going to be carried out.
If you or the council miss a normal recycling collection one week, then a glass bottle or aluminium can sitting in the garden isn’t going to hurt anyone. But swap that for some fish bones, or fresh fruit and you’ve got a whole catalogue of things that might go wrong. This is something the residents of Eastville in Bristol found out when they had a smell so bad following a missed collection they decided to dump the bin on their councillor’s own front doorstep.
DEFRA and all the local councils are very keen to stress the importance of recycling our food waste in the future. Not only does it save on what goes into the landfills but also the process of anaerobic digestion, which happens at the plant, produces effective biogas that can be used in the National Grid. It’s just going to be a case of collecting the bins before the maggots find them.
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