Food waste recycling comes to Pendle

7,000 households across Pendle will spring into a new way of recycling when the Council launches food waste recycling collections this April.

Every week food waste will be collected from homes and turned into high quality compost for use on farms across the North West.

Councillor John David, who represents recycling in Pendle, said :

"We know that food waste makes up almost 35% of the rubbish in the average household's grey bin.

"Recycling this proportion of our waste will certainly help us on our way to meeting our target of recycling 56% of Pendle's waste by 2015."

The food waste collections will not be borough-wide.

Instead 7,000 terraced homes have been chosen in each of the ten recycling zones.

These homes are spread across Pendle in :

• Barnoldswick
• Earby
• Brierfield
• Barrowford
• the Cloverhill, Whitefield and Bradley wards of Nelson
  

 and the Horsfield, Vivary Bridge and Waterside wards of Colne.

Councillor David added :

"The food waste collections are funded initially through £70,000 of funding from WRAP, a national organisation which works with councils to encourage greater levels of recycling.

 "£50,000 has come from Lancashire County Council to buy the containers residents will use to keep their food waste in."

The 7,000 homes taking part in the scheme will each receive a kitchen caddy and an outdoor food waste caddy.

The kitchen caddy is the size of a toaster and can easily be stored on a kitchen worktop.

Residents should scrape their leftovers into the kitchen caddy after a meal, or put in their vegetable peelings or chicken trimmings, for example, while preparing food.

The kitchen caddy should be lined with a compostable bag made of corn starch.

Residents will be given adequate supplies of the corn starch liners, and will be told how to get more when they are running low.

It's so important that residents don't use plastic bags in the kitchen caddy as these can't be composted with the food waste.

The outdoor caddy, into which tied up bags of food from the kitchen caddy should be placed, is half the size of a green recycling box.

It can be stored outside and has a lockable lid to prevent pets and other animals getting at the food waste, even if the caddy is knocked over.

Into the food waste recycling caddy, residents can put :

• Meat and fish - raw and cooked including bones
• Fruit and vegetables - raw and cooked
• All dairy products such as eggs and cheese
• Bread, cakes and pastries
• Rice, pasta and beans
• Uneaten food from your plates and dishes
• Tea bags and coffee grounds.

Carole Taylor, Waste Services Manager (Policy), said :

"We want residents to get into the habit of scraping their leftovers into the kitchen caddies at the end of mealtimes.

"And there's so much food that we trim off before cooking - that can go in there too.

"The only food we don't want residents to put into the caddies is cooking oils or any other liquid foods.

"Residents will be pleased to know that we're collecting their food waste weekly as this is something we know they feel strongly about."

The food waste collected from Pendle homes will be taken to a site in Todmorden that specialises in indoor composting where it will be processed into high quality compost.

"So your leftover Sunday lunch could help to grow more carrots and spuds," added Carole. 

If you're going to be asked to take part in the food waste recycling collections, you will receive an information pack through your door by the middle of March. This will tell you everything you need to know.

Included in the pack will be details of roadshow events the Council has organised for residents to come along, ask questions and see the kitchen and outdoor caddies for themselves.

For further information about the food waste collections in Pendle, look on our website www.pendle.gov.uk/foodwaste.

-ends-

What's happening when?

Delivery of information packs to participating households 1st - 12th March

Roadshows 13th - 26th March

Delivery of containers 12th - 16th April

Start of collections 19th April