By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
A year-long food waste collection trial has started for more than 3,000 Nottingham homes.
Up to 37 per cent of household rubbish placed in bins is food waste, Nottingham City Council says.
All local councils will be required to collect food waste from homes separately by April 2025 under Government law, and so the council is testing how best it can achieve this.
The trial, which is running across the Berridge Ward north of the Forest Recreation Ground, will cover 3,426 homes.
The council told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the first collections will take place on Friday, March 3.
Speaking about the trial at a meeting in February, Portfolio Holder for the Environment, Cllr Sally Longford (Lab), said: “Things are changing, the legislation has changed, and we have to respond to that including for example we have to introduce food waste collection in the near future.
“When the small caddies are delivered, which will be in your kitchen, on your worktop probably, where you put your food waste, there will be a knock on the door and a leaflet [will be delivered].
“We have multiple languages, there will be a QR code that you can click on, to access the information.
“We are going to trial all these different ways of getting the message across, and we know we have got to get on with this.
“But we’ve also got to do it gradually because there will be, particularly for some parts of the city, a really concerted effort needed in order to ensure people understand the new system.”
Food waste placed in designated bins will be turned into electricity and fertiliser for farming at an anaerobic digestion site at Biodynamic in Colwick.
Residents will be given two food waste containers, including a seven-litre indoor caddy to put in the kitchen, as well as a larger 23-litre food waste bin to be placed outside for collection.
The food waste will be collected weekly on the same day as household waste and recycling.
However it will be collected by a different vehicle and at a different time of the day.
It forms part of the overall transformation of the council’s waste strategy.
A public consultation, which ended in December last year, was held to determine how waste will be collected in the future.
The authority says it needs a new strategy because of Government targets to increase the amount of waste recycled in England to 65 per cent, while keeping waste that ends up in landfill below 10 per cent.
While Nottingham currently only sends around eight per cent of its collected waste to landfill, the council says its recycling rates need to be improved.
The city’s recycling rate in 2019 was 27 per cent, however by October 2022 it had fallen to 23.9 per cent.
There will be two options.
The first is ‘twin stream’, whereby residents will get a container for food waste, collected every week, as well as a container for paper and card and a bin for their remaining recycling including glass, plastic and cartons.
These will be collected fortnightly.
Multi-stream, the other method, will mean residents will get multiple containers for food waste, paper and card, as well as separate containers for each recycling material such as glass and plastic.
This method will require a new type of bin lorry and waste would be collected weekly.
General waste bin sizes would therefore be reduced as a result.
