According to the Local Government Association, we will run out of landfill capacity in around three years if we continue to send the same amount of waste to landfill as we do now. It’s therefore easy to see how critical it is that action is taken now to increase recycling figures, before it’s too late.

The fact we must face though, is that - by failing to implement proper legislation ­- England is falling behind other EU nations, including its UK counterparts, when it comes to recycling and food waste in particular. This is simply due to a lack of support from those in power. Ultimately, we need to achieve behavioural change across businesses, local authorities and individuals to increase recycling in the UK, particularly food waste, and meet wider global targets. Therefore, we need stronger direction for national policy.

Already this year we have had a mix of positive and negative news stories regarding food waste. Before the general election, the Green Party committed to impose a food waste to landfill ban if elected to serve, while the Labour Party backtracked on its commitment to do the same. While there’s been little from the Conservative Party on its plans, it will be very interesting to see where the course of the next parliament takes us on this.

On the positive news front, the London Assembly Environment Committee recently completed its investigation into the management of London’s household food waste and published the resulting 'Bag it or bin it?' report. It was very positive to see a dedicated investigation into household food waste recycling and an exploration into the steps the Mayor of London, local authorities, and central government should be taking to improve recycling rates. The report echoed my views that to increase recycling rates, the UK has further to go in reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill. It is only through a joined-up approach, by government, industry and businesses, that we will achieve this.

One of the report’s recommendations to increase food waste recycling is that the Mayor should join local councils in the effort to secure additional resources from government and develop separate food and organic waste collection services. The report also states that the Mayor should work more closely with the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) and councils across the capital to introduce mechanisms for a consistent, London-wide approach to communication about food waste. It is this collaboration and consistency of messaging that I think is central to the increase in uptake.

There is one recommendation within the report that I don’t agree with, however, and this is the call for government to press for EU regulations to be changed to allow anaerobic digestion (AD) of sewage sludge and organic waste alongside each other. The issue with this is the long-term sustainability of the process. Currently, we are able to close the recycling loop as the by-product of AD from food waste is a nutrient-rich fertiliser that can be used by farmers to treat crops. However, if co-treatment was allowed, then we believe the opportunities for using the valuable recovered nutrients as a fertiliser for growing new food products would be lost, due to the pathogens in human waste and sewage. The EU regulation places the safety of the food chain as an obvious priority and this must be maintained.

It will be interesting to see what news the coming months will bring but it is evident we are some way from a joined-up approach to food waste recycling. It is only through a national strategy that we will reach recycling targets and reap the financial benefit. If we were to achieve zero food waste to landfill nationwide, in 2020 we could generate over 1.1 terawatts of energy, 27 million fewer tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, return over 1.3 million tonnes of nutrient-rich fertiliser to farmland and save the public sector over £3.7 billion. So, the time to act is now.

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