Comments

• John Costigane

  September 19 2008

  Hi Liz, Attacking the food waste problem will be greatly helped by food waste collections. Your 78% satisfaction figure for householders undergoing the trials show that it will be a winner. The removal of food waste from the home bin ( I already have achieved this with composting and Bokashi bin use) transforms the character of the waste to a collection of plastic packaging. It also tends to be a cleaner situation, provided food containers are washed.

• Malcolm Aickin

  September 25 2008

  WRAP’s research brings important insights to understanding food waste but ignores home treatment. Dedicated food waste collection is not a green solution and only plays a part in reducing food waste. In the real world separate collection is expensive financially: £200 per tonne, and environmentally 125kg CO2e tonne-1. WRAP categorise most food waste as avoidable. An expensive infrastructure for waste we can avoid in the first place is unsustainable. The provision of more collection increases waste. Your report shows food waste diverted from the compost heap to the food bin, but capture rates are well below 80%. The advantages you tried to include are integral to food waste digesters. They will not be applicable in every situation but where appropriate they are convenient and attractive to the public, cheaper, in environmental and financial terms, reduce the amount of food waste collected and as Joan Ruddock pointed out at your launch of TFWW, alert users to the amount wasted.

• Liz Goodwin

  September 26 2008

  My comments were, of course, reflecting on the good results we had for our food waste collection trials. Unfortunately we can’t comment on everything we are doing, all the time. We do recognise the benefits of home treatment for organic waste. That is why we run our very successful home composting campaign, and have distributed nearly 2 million home composters since we started in 2004. We also offer a full range of food waste digesters – Green Cone, Green Johanna, wormeries and bokashi units- all delivered at cost to householders who are interested in managing their own food waste in this way. Valuable as these options are in reducing the total amount of food waste presented for treatment, only a minority of households will be able or willing to use these methods. Giving people user friendly alternatives is essential

• John Costigane

  September 30 2008

  Hi again Liz, Absolutely correct, I deal with my own food waste but I am 1 in 30,000. The other 29,999 need food collections. Real world situations need similar soutions.

• B. Robinson

  February 12 2009

  Liz, your articles are a breath of common-sense. BUT why, in view of the sheer common-sense of composting / anaerobically digesting food waste, is my council probaly going to receive more than £70million PFI to incinerate allegdly residual waste from which they are not removing the food waste?

• B. Robinson

  February 12 2009

  Can you give any (approximate) costings for separated-at-source kerbside collections of food waste. A great plus of this that the resident does not charge for the initial 'sorting' and feels pride in doing a good job. There are far more of us out here trying to save the planet than even you can imagine. BUT the reward we get seems to be an incinerator at the end of the road. WHY?; .e role of freeI d hope that costs saare not as high as suggested. It does eem to methough that figures for coWill you give some figures for costs of collection of separated-at-source

• Liz Goodwin

  February 16 2009

  B.Robinson, WRAP believes weekly food waste collections are the right long term solution - they give the best environmental outcome if the food is converted to energy efficiently (through Anaerobic digestion and Combined Heat and Power). However, to work, collection schemes need to be well explained and well designed and easy to use. We expect there will be increasing interest among councils in separate food waste collections and we will be working with local authorities to provide advice and expertise. Each local authority is responsible for deciding how to manage waste in their area. One of the options they can choose is to invest in new infrastructure - and they can then choose how this investment is financed. As Defra holds the overall responsibility for meeting the EU landfill targets, the department issues financial support (in the form of PFI credits) to those authorities who use PFI to procure their waste infrastructure projects.

• Liz Goodwin

  February 19 2009

  WRAP had been working with a number of local authorities on introducing food waste collection services. Our work suggests that the cost of a separate food waste collection service is in the order of £7-£11 per household per year. However, costs will vary depending on local circumstances. In some cases councils can introduce food waste collections at a lower cost as they are able to make changes to their refuse collection service and achieve savings from sending less waste to landfill.

• Richard

  February 25 2010

  Gloucester City has just started food waste collection. Big problem, it has not included compostable liners for the caddy. So people complain that they have to clean this 'slop bucket' and in the summer, uncontained food wast will attract vermin and flies in the outside container. To add insult to an incomplete system, people who buy and use compostable bags for the food caddy have their collection refused because quote'only newspaper is acceptable to line the bin' This kind of situation clearly demonstrates that if people are given half the package, it's worse than nothing at all, as it opens up the system to major criticism. I endorse food waste collection, but as a full package that has been carefully planned and careless mistakes such as outlined above have been removed. No doubt ther omission of bag liners is a cost cutting measure, that will ultimately backfire as a vote loser and ultimately support the skeptics who would rather burn everything in an incinerator.

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