Food waste collections central to waste reduction and making most of resource

ADBA PRESS RELEASE

Giving evidence to the House of Lords EU Sub Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Energy today [11 December] Charlotte Morton, chief executive, ADBA said:

Reducing the extraordinary amount of food we waste is clearly the priority. Source separated food waste collections are a significant tool to help achieve that goal, since they allow waste producers to see what they are wasting and think how they can reduce that. What’s left is then available to be sent for treatment through anaerobic digestion, which is currently the technology which makes the most of this valuable resource.

 

Waste minimisation should always be the priority but there will always be a proportion of food waste remaining after even the best efforts to reduce and reuse and this should be recycled in the best possible way – through anaerobic digestion.

 

AD extracts the energy in our food waste and converts this into ultra-low carbon gas, currently the only renewable fuel available for heavy goods vehicles, at the same time as recycling the valuable nutrients and organic matter back to land. AD therefore has significant strategic value both to the UK and Europe.

Transcripts of oral evidence to the committee on food waste prevention are available on the Committee’s homepage here today’s session will be available in due course.