Environment secretary Hilary Benn has hit out at the practice of sending Christmas leftovers to landfill in an announcement that appears to add momentum to the chances of food waste being banned from landfill entirely in the near future.

The comments came as he announced the names of seven local authorities and one waste partnership which are to each receive a share of a £1.3 million fund administered by the Waste and Resources Action Programme to introduce new separate collections of food waste from households.

Defra also published research showing that 78% of people support having separate food waste collection, with two-thirds of people saying they used the service when it was offered to them, and 92% of those who used the service regularly labelling it "easy to use".

Mr Benn said that the evidence of the 'Enhancing Participation in Kitchen Waste Collections' research, which was led by consultants Brock Lyndhurst, and the experience of councils running food waste collections would help Defra to "make decisions on the next steps".

The government has already said that it will consult on material-specific landfill bans for waste streams such as food in the New Year.

Research

Mr Benn attacked the practice of sending Christmas food waste to landfill

Commenting on the research, Mr Benn asked: "How can it make sense to feed our landfill sites with our Christmas leftovers every year when we could be recycling them and turning them into something useful?"

And, he labelled the results of the research "encouraging" and said they represented proof that collecting food waste was "definitely working", and was popular.

He also callled for all councils to introduce food waste collections "as soon as possible", and by 2020 at the latest.

Funding

The local authorities who were today named as benefiting from WRAP funding for introducing food waste collections are:

• Broadland district council, in Norfolk;
• London borough of Islington;
• London borough of Lambeth;
• Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council, in Staffordshire;
• Oxford city council;
• Sefton metropolitan borough council, on Merseyside;
• Somerset Waste Partnership - which manages recycling and waste on behalf of four districts, one borough and Somerset county council; and,
• West Dorset district council.

 

WRAP originally wrote to all England's local authorities in July 2009 making them aware of a total of £3.5 million of funding for introducing new separate food waste collections during 2009/10 and 2010/11 (see letsrecycle.com story).