Salford City Council (SCC) has begun a new weekly food waste collection scheme as part of a recycling overhaul, to help increase recycling rates and ‘reduce the costs of sending waste to landfill’.

This comes after SCC’s plans to invest in improved food recycling facilities for all Salford residents were approved in 2010.

Weekly Collections

Irlam and Cadishead residents were the first to see food waste collected on a weekly, rather than fortnightly basis, when the scheme kicked in earlier this month (2 April).

Under the new scheme, residents are being asked to deposit their food waste into pink-lidded garden waste bins, which were delivered in March, or 23-litre external food caddies if they do not have a pink-lidded bin.

Salford residents have been encouraged to deposit their food waste in garden waste bins rather than the weekly refuse collection bin since September 2011, but, until now, the food waste bins had been collected fortnightly.

Under the new policy, collected food waste will be sent to be recycled at Rochdale, Stockport, Tafford or Bolton’s In-Vessel Composting (IVC) facilities. The recycled compost will be used as fertiliser throughout the northwest.

According to SCC, the new service ‘will allow [residents] to recycle more and could reduce the cost of waste disposal by over one million pounds a year’.

The changes to food waste collections will run alongside fortnightly collections of blue bins (paper, cardboard and drinks cartons), brown bins (glass, cans and plastic bottles) and black bins (non-recyclable waste).

Food waste service extended to 60,000 more households

The council has stated that the new service will be rolled out across all other areas of the city from 28 May, allowing ‘60,000 more households to recycle food waste’.

Salford households that do not currently use a pink-lidded bin to recycle food waste will be provided with a 23-litre outdoor food bin, a seven-litre kitchen caddy and free ‘Compost-a-bag’ compostable liners, made by bin manufacturer, Straight plc.

To date,, the council has delivered 63,000 indoor and 63,000 external food caddies and 200,000 rolls of compostable liners across the Salford area to prepare residents for the change in service.

It is also expected that a similar service will be launched for residents in high-rise flats in September 2013.

“Much easier to recycle”

Speakingof the launch of the new scheme Councillor Gena Merrett, Assistant Mayor for Housing and Environment, said: "Food waste typically makes up a third of the average household bin where people don't recycle or compost it. It currently costs the city over £17 million to send this waste to landfill and if we don't change this will continue to go up each year. It makes perfect sense to change the service to boost recycling and save money.

Adding that weekly collections will ”make it much easier to recycle, not least because all the bins will be collected on the same day from now on”, Merrett went on to outline the frequency of collections under the changes to the recycling scheme

“Food and garden waste goes in the pink-lidded bin or outdoor food bin which will be collected every week. Paper and cardboard which goes in the blue bin and glass, plastic bottles and cans which go in the brown bin will be collected every two weeks. Anything else, which can’t be recycled at a household waste centre, goes in the black bin, which will be collected every two weeks.”

The council will be sending out information packs and new bin collection calendars to households in the Salford area to make them aware of the changes.

Eligible households will then receive their new bins on the following dates:

Read more about Salford City Council’s new food waste recycling scheme.