Essex residents move food waste from plate to purpose

Essex County Council’s Love Essex team has successfully rolled out a year-long food recycling project to over 375,000 households in Essex.

Eligible households were delivered a one-off roll of compostable liners, an information leaflet about the benefits of recycling food, and a sticker was applied to wheeled general waste bins. This was coupled with county-wide and area-specific communications across the county.

The project has already witnessed encouraging results, including an increase in residents requesting new or replacement food recycling caddies from their local councils. Within the first three months of roll-out, there has been an average increase of 21% of food recycled at kerbside across the three phases in comparison to the previous year. This is more than double the initial target the council set out to achieve.

This means that more Essex residents are making the most of their free weekly food recycling collection service and transforming their food into energy and fertiliser via an anaerobic digestion facility. More residents utilising the food recycling service not only reduces the amount of harmful greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, but it also reduces transportation and disposal costs via landfill. This means money can be better spent on other vital council services across the county.

In Essex, a whopping 25% of all rubbish thrown away to landfill is food. Love Essex first promotes ways in which residents can avoid food waste in the first place but are eager to continue encouraging residents to compost and recycle too. Reducing, recycling, and recovering promotes a circular economy which is in line with the Council’s strategic goals and the Waste Strategy for Essex.

A focus on food recycling remains at Essex County Council with continued work to reach more households across Essex and encourage the use of food recycling services.

Find out how you can get started with food recycling or read more about the food recycling project.