Plans for food waste collections in Chorley

Chorley Council has set out its plan for dedicated food waste collections from households in the borough.

The authority is aiming to introduce the service from 30th March next year – just in time to meet a government deadline by which all councils are required to begin weekly doorstep pick-ups of disposed food.

The aim is to boost recycling rates by separating unwanted consumables – which take up a third of the average UK household’s non-recycled waste – from the rest of the rubbish.

A meeting of Chorley Council’s liaison committee heard that households will be provided with two bins for leftover food – a smaller ‘caddy’ designed to be kept in the kitchen, for ease of use, and a larger outdoor repository into which the contents can be transferred for collection.   The latter will have a lockable lid to prevent it being scavenged by animals.

Although each of Lancashire’s 14 district and standalone councils will make their own arrangements for food waste collection, the process is likely to be similar across much of the county, as many of the authorities have procured the new bins collectively to reduce costs.

In Chorley, distribution of the bins will begin in mid-February and residents will also receive a ‘starter pack’, which will include two rolls of recycled plastic liners for the seven-litre indoor vessel.

However, Doug Cridland, the authority’s waste services manager, told the committee that householders will be given the message that “any bag will do” – and they will be able to use plastic or compostable bags once their free rolls have run out.

Six new food waste collection rounds will be launched and the new bins will be emptied on the same days that households have their existing green and blue bins emptied.

Mr. Cridland said communication with residents would be “key” to the success of the new scheme, adding that a local public information campaign was currently in development.

“We need to get the message out loud and clear and it needs to be very well understood,” he said.

Committee member Aaron Beavers queried the risk of the outdoor, 23-litre bins blowing over, but Doug Cridland said research with councils in “windy Wales”, which are already collecting food waste, showed that that had not generally been a problem.

Chorley Council is aiming to achieve at least a 60 percent “participation rate”, whereby that proportion of households opt to properly separate leftover food from the rest of their waste once the new collections start.

The hope is that so-called “residual” rubbish will be reduced by about 70kg per property each year and recycling rates will increase borough-wide by 10 percent from the current 41.8 percent.

Food waste from across Lancashire will be taken to a previously mothballed anaerobic digestion plant within Lancashire County Council’s waste processing facility in Farington, in South Ribble.   The specialist kit turns gas created from organic waste into electricity, which will be used to power the whole of that site.

Disposed food already forms part of the general mix of waste at the Farington operation, but it has not been anaerobically digested there for more than a decade, when a different process to that which is now planned was abandoned. 

The county council said last year that any odours emanating from the plant during that period were “entirely as a result of the air management system at the facility not being operated correctly”.