Fact sheet 20
Food waste recycling
From spring 2011, food waste recycling will be piloted in several areas across
the city. A citywide food waste collection service would have the potential to
divert around 20,000 tonnes of food waste from landfill every year.
What goes into your food waste bin?
You can recycle a range of materials in the food waste bin:
YES PLEASE
 beans, pasta and rice
 bread, cakes and other bakery items
 dairy products, such as cheese
 eggs and egg shells
 fruit and vegetables, including peelings
 meat and fish, including bones
 tea bags and coffee grounds
 fast foods such as chips, burgers and pizzas
NO THANKS
 food packaging
 liquids (including milk and cooking oil)
 garden waste
 plastic bags or bin liners
 animal waste or bedding
How to use the food waste service
Each household taking part in the pilot will receive
an internal kitchen caddy and depending on the type
of house, either a small kerbside food waste bin or a
communal food waste bin.
1 line your kitchen caddy with a compostable liner
2 fill your caddy with unwanted food waste
3 when your kitchen caddy is full, knot the liner and
put the contents into your external food waste bin
4 place the compostable liner in your external bin.
What happens to your food waste?
Your food waste is used to make compost for
agricultural purposes. Compost is a rich and crumbly
blend of partially decomposed organic material that
helps to increase productivity and to enable more
crops to be grown.
Make our city
burgh
Waste journey: Food waste
1 Collection of
food waste
Food waste is collected
from households across
the city.
Love food hate waste
If you’re not taking part in the food waste pilot, you
can still help by throwing out less or no food. There
are top tips to help you not waste and learn how to
reduce food waste when shopping and cooking.
For more information you can visit:
http://www.wasteawarelovefood.org.uk
Start Composting
2 Recycling
methods
Food waste can be
recycled in one of
two ways:
Anaerobic Digestion
Anaerobic Digestion
is a biological process, similar to composting,
that uses micro-organisms to treat kitchen and
garden wastes and other organic materials. It
differs to composting in that anaerobic digestion
can only take place in the absence of oxygen. A
useful by-product of digestion is ‘biogas’, a gas
similar in composition to landfill gas that can
be burned to generate heat or power. The other
products of anaerobic digestion are liquid and
solid digestates, which can be applied to soils
as fertiliser in order to build up the organic and
nutrient levels.
In-vessel composting
In-vessel composting is an industrial form of
composting. This involves composting of organic
(biodegradable) waste in enclosed reactors.
These generally consist of metal tanks or concrete
bunkers in which air flow and temperature can be
controlled, using the principles of a “bioreactor”.
Generally the air circulation is metered via buried
tubes that allow fresh air to be injected under
pressure, with the exhaust being extracted
through a biofilter, with temperature and moisture
conditions monitored using probes in the mass
to allow maintenance of optimum aerobic
decomposition conditions.
Making home compost can reduce the amount
of household waste by up to 30% per year for a
typical household.
For more information you can visit:
http://gardening.wasteawarescotland.org.uk/
compost.asp for advice and support.
Did you know?
• we throw away a third of all the food we buy.
The average household bin in Edinburgh
contained around 36% food waste
• over £1 billion worth of food is wasted by
consumers in Scotland each year. That’s an
average of £430 per household
• as food waste rots in a landfill it generates
large amounts of methane – a powerful
greenhouse gas
• the collected food is composted and turned into
a fertiliser which is used on agricultural land.