A dedicated weekly food waste collection service for households will launch this October in Bracknell Forest to reduce the borough’s impact on climate change.
On Tuesday 28th January, Executive councillors approved proposals to implement a weekly food waste collection this autumn.
The Executive approved:
Introducing a weekly food waste collection service to all houses in Bracknell Forest from 5th October, 2020. Encouraging all residents to reduce, reuse and recycle everything possible to cut the amount of waste going to landfill.
Maximising performance of the food waste collection service by changing refuse collection frequency to once every 3 weeks.
The weekly food waste collection for every house in the borough aims to cut the amount of rubbish going to environmentally costly landfill sites by around 4,000 tonnes a year.
This waste will then be turned into renewable energy and recycled into fertiliser.
Bracknell Forest’s recycling rate has plateaued over the past few years at around 40% in total and, as part of its response to climate change, the council is committed to improving that rate and the proposals agreed will provide that opportunity.
Other UK councils with less than fortnightly refuse collections have seen their recycling rate grow by around 6% on average. Bracknell Forest aims to achieve and exceed this with a target of 10% compared to 2018/19 figures.
Recent waste surveys have shown that food waste accounts for 42% of waste in residual waste bins. Around another 19% of waste that goes in residents’ residual bins could be recycled, either in the blue recycling bin or via one of the numerous recycling banks.
Food can cause odour in bins so this change will allow more frequent collections from a small lockable caddy, designed to prevent animals accessing the contents. A mixture of items can be put in the food recycling caddy including:
- all cooked and uncooked food
- meat and fish bones
- tea bags and coffee grounds
- vegetable peelings, banana skins and apple cores
- pet food
- out of date food (without packaging)
- cooking oil in a sealed plastic bottle (this needs to be in the outdoor caddy on collection day)
While the finer details of the scheme now need to be worked out, including specific food waste collection days, the council will support residents to get ready for these changes with more detailed information being made available over the coming months.