More than £500,000 has been saved by Swindon residents who have put out thousands of tonnes in food waste for recycling in the last year.

Since weekly food waste collection was rolled out to nearly every household across the borough in November 2023, 4,440 tonnes of leftovers, vegetable peelings and meat and fish bones have been put out for collection.

That has saved the council more than £500,000 – it has to pay for waste to be taken away and processed or landfilled but it makes a small profit  on the recycling of food waste.

Councillor Chris Watts, the council’s Cabinet Member for Highways and the Environment, wants to encourage more people to put out their food waste and to recycle more of their household waste generally.

He said: ”We want to be as responsible as we can and, although we’re in a great position in that we send so little waste to landfill, we could make things even better if we recycled more of our waste, including both food and plastics. 

“Thank you to everyone who has supported our new food waste collection service since it has been introduced, helping us achieve a greener Swindon.”

The borough council is keen to help more people recycle their food waste and said: “If residents are yet to use the service, they can get started by ordering two caddies, five-litre caddy for indoors and 23 litre for outdoors, from the council's website.”

Food waste can be put loose in the caddies, or residents can use a plastic or biodegradable bag to line it. When the small indoor caddy is full, residents should empty the contents into the outdoor caddy, and put it out for 6.30am on their collection day.

All the food waste collected in Swindon is taken to a company in Wiltshire, where a process called anaerobic digestion is used to break it down. This generates methane which is collected and converted into biogas that is used to generate electricity.

Caddies can be ordered from swindon.gov.uk by putting in ‘food waste’ to the search bar on the homepage.

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