How can we increase household food waste to AD in existing collection schemes?

Figures released by WRAP today show that the amount of household food waste being collected for AD remains low: 

“Local authorities sent 314,516 tonnes of food waste to AD facilities in Great Britain; 191,830 tonnes in England, 52,686 tonnes in Wales in 2014/15, and 70,000 tonnes in Scotland in 2014.”

While of course there is a lack of separate food waste collections in England, there is also the potential to increase uptake from existing collection schemes.

This chart from WRAP shows the variability of what is collected by authorities:

Clearly more can be done to encourage households and others to recycle more food waste.

This was the reason that WRAP, ourselves and others embarked on the Food Waste Recycling Action Plan (FWRAP).

The highlights of this plan are shown here (click to expand):

We're working with WRAP and AD operators to increase the uptake of food waste collected.

One of the great initiatives was the banana skins getting involved in promoting food waste recycling in Wales, Devon, Oxfordshire and elsewhere:

If you're interested in finding out more about what the AD industry can do to encourage more food waste recycling, including all the guidance WRAP has been producing for both the AD industry and local authorities, just let me know on ollie.more@adbioresources.org

or attend UK AD & BIOGAS AND WORLD BIOGAS EXPO 2017 to hear from WRAP and ourselves on the subject.

Lokking at the yield variability above, there has to be an extra hundred thousand tonnes of food waste missing the food waste bins and ending up in inefficient combustion units or landfill at the moment (AD extracts 60% more energy than food waste combustion).