Richmond expands food waste scheme, despite trial problems

The trial covered 700 households but only saw one in four of the homes on the scheme using their food waste collection service.

However, the London borough believes the fact it was only collecting uncooked vegetable food waste, rather than all food waste, was a significant factor in the low participation rate.

” This time we will be collecting all food waste so residents can literally scrape their food waste from their plate into a five-litre kitchen caddy. “
– David Ingham, London borough of Richmond
David Ingham, the council's green waste recycling officer, said the scheme would be expanded to 4,000 of the council's 78,000 homes over the coming weeks. He explained: “This time we will be collecting all food waste so residents can literally scrape their food waste from their plate into a five-litre kitchen caddy, which we provide.

“We think this will make it easier for them and more people will participate, we will also be stepping up our advice and information to residents on how they can use the service,” he added.

Residents can empty their kitchen caddy into a 25-litre bin, on their doorstep, which will be collected weekly and taken to the in-vessel composting facility run by West London Composting in Harefield. Both bins are provided by container supplier Straight, based in Leeds.

Weekly
Mr Ingham said that the council had decided not to ask residents to put food waste into their fortnightly collected green waste bin because it wanted to collect kitchen waste on a weekly basis.

The 4,000 households are spread across different demographic and geographical areas of the borough to enable the council to see a broad view of how the service operates in different situations.

“It will enable us to address any challenges we encounter before we look at expanding the scheme further,” said Mr Ingham.

The scheme was partly enabled by a 25,000 grant from the London Recycling Fund, however Mr Ingham said the council was putting in extra money itself for the scheme. He added: “to extend the scheme to the whole borough we would need more vehicles. Our vehicles are up for renewal in 18 months, so it may be the case that we wait until then.”