The service was launched in Shepton Mallet on Friday, and is to run throughout the district of Mendip, helping the county move towards a 40% household waste recycling level.
Food waste – including cooked and uncooked food and animal by-products – will be collected from households each week in new kitchen waste containers along with the existing kerbside recycling box. The material will be composted at facilities run by the county council-owned waste management firm Wyvern Waste.
Cllr Nigel Woollcombe-Adams, who chairs the Somerset Waste Partnership, explained: “This is all about making recycling the priority. Food waste makes up an astonishing 25% of the average bin, and diverting this material away from landfill and into composting will make a massive difference in significantly boosting our recycling rates.”
Garden waste
As well as the new food waste collections, households in Mendip are being offered garden waste collections on alternate weeks to their residual waste collections. Residents can hire a wheeled bin for 25 a year, or purchase paper sacks for 50 pence each.
The new package of services is being introduced across the Mendip district over the next 18 months and similar services are being put in place in South Somerset and Taunton Deane, while Sedgemoor district council are running a garden waste collection service. The new services have been funded through Somerset's 5.5 million grant from Defra's Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund.
Lesley Rowan, from Mendip district council, said: “The financial cost of landfilling our waste is going up year by year, and soon the government will fine us if we landfill too much waste. We have introduced these new services in order to avoid these fines.”
Somerset is currently recycling about 27% of its household waste, but must reach the 40% mark by 2005/06.
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