LAWR

FOOD WASTE Food waste reduction Preston City Council's cabinet recently agreed to discontinue the city's food waste collection service from next year in a bid to reduce costs. LA WR finds out more. n September, Preston City Council's cabi- net decided that it would stop its sepa- rate food waste collec- tion service, which it offers to 15,000 properties, by February 2015. From next year it will allow residents to place food waste in residual waste bins for processing at Lancashire County Council's mechanical biological treat- ment (MBT) facility. It says it could save around £90,000 by doing this. The Council will have to save £3.6m a year by 2017/18. According to a Preston City Council spokesman,"stopping the obsolete food waste scheme will help towards this savings target". Background Preston's food waste scheme was intro- duced in 2005. The scheme operated in the "inner urban" areas of the city of Preston. At its height the food waste scheme collected food waste from 15,000 homes. Households were issued with a food waste container which was emptied weekly. The food waste was then taken to a treatment facility and turned into organic compost. Looking to the future, the Council has acknowledged that although the MBT method would not be "as benefi- cial as composting the material sepa- rately, there is an environmental ben- efit in this treatment route". It is anticipated that removing this service would reduce the Council's recycling rate by approximately one per cent (to 33%), based on current col- lected tonnages of 520 tonnes. Cabinet member for resources Councillor Martyn Rawlinson says: "No doubt some people will miss the service, but the landscape has changed since it was brought in. We know there is going to be a reaction, but we hope people will understand the budget situation and the changes in waste collection." Lancashire-based council Pendle is also suspending its collections to save costs due to the scheme "costing £100,000 per year" and "uncertainties over the future of food waste processing facilities being available in Lancashire". Critics may argue that the removal of food waste collection services could act as a possible disincentive to encourage food waste recycling. Yet, a Preston City Council spokesman thinks otherwise. He says: "Food waste is a big problem with over seven million tonnes of food thrown away in the UK every year. Recycling food waste is a much better option as when food waste goes to landfill it breaks down and releases methane gas which is a potent greenhouse gas. "In Preston all organic waste is screened and sent for composting so we can recover food waste this way. But the real issue is upstream where people are buying food in the first place and then throwing it away. "This is due to a wide range of reasons including buying habits, edu- cation and awareness, supermarket promotions, sell by and use by dates as well as a lack of basic cookery skills – all of which require concerted action from a wide range of sectors and partners. "The national Love Food Hate Waste campaign and Food Waste Scotland have made progress in this area. Some supermarkets have also recognised food waste as a problem but more could be done to stop people wasting what is a costly and precious resource that, with over one billion people on the planet suffering from chronic hunger, really is worth more than recycling." I November 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 13 " Stopping the ob- solete food waste scheme will help to- wards [the] savings target. "

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