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23/09/2009

The stink around food waste

Entry from 'Thoughts from the Kerbside' - The Big Wheelie Bin Blog

A thoughtful and sometimes humourous look at the world of waste, brought to you by industry observers. We'd like to create a vibrant blogger community going forward, so if you'd like to become a regular blogger for LAWR, please get in touch - we'd love to hear from you!

Food waste seems to be flavour of the month when it comes to recycling ... or maybe not. There is still a lot of concern and reluctance among councils to undertake food waste collection trials, despite the financial incentives being offered from WRAP.

This was borne out during my recent trip to RWM up in Birmingham, where I got talking to a researcher who was carrying out some consultancy work for one particular local authority.

He told me that despite doing the sums - which showed that food waste collections would be cheaper than landfill - and despite extensive talks with householders - who seemed by and large to be in favour of having their food collected - when it came to the crunch, the council backed out at the last minute.

When I asked why, he said the members (that's the elected members, the councillors) were fearful of a public backlash. They thought food waste was a potato too politically hot to risk going after. And therein lies the rub.

As long as the cost and carbon benefits are there (and sometimes they are not), your average frontline recycling officer knows it makes sense. Your council's waste department knows it makes sense. Even the people of Britain can be won over with a convincing argument. But councillors ... ahh. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the line: "We couldn't get buy-in from our members".

So, perhaps it's time our elected members got their heads out of the sand and actually took the time to venture out with the frontline officers, with the consultants, and talk to the public to get their views before making an informed decision. They would probably argue that they do. But on the anecdotal evidence outlined above, it would seem not.

Maxine Perella, editor of LAWR

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Comments

By Amanda J Dowling
Our local authority have just delivered our food waste collection bins here in Surrey after successful trials in three villages. Fantastic news. Lets hope they remember to collect them this week!

Is waste still a dirty word when it comes to public perception?

Yes, they don't see the potential value of it
Maybe, but attitudes are slowly changing
No, it has almost become sexy!

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