12 Dec Essex County Council urges residents to recycle food left over from Christmas celebrations
It’s not only wrapping paper and packaging that can be recycled over Christmas, your food can be recycled too! This is really important given the waste typically generated from festive feasts; around 4.5 million tonnes of food is wasted from Christmas dinners in the UK each year alone.
With a quarter of rubbish thrown away in Essex being food, the County Council is on a mission to reduce the spike in food headed to landfill this festive period and make residents aware of how they can both reduce food waste and recycle what they have.
While there is lots of advice offered to residents on Essex County Council’s Love Essex website about reducing the amount of food they throw away, the Council’s Food Recycling project aims to encourage residents to make the most of their free, weekly, kerbside food recycling collection service. This way, anything that doesn’t get eaten can be transformed into energy for our homes and fertiliser to be used again!
All food items can be recycled in Essex, including the following:
• Meat bones
• Cheese
• Vegetable peelings
• Chocolate
• Puddings
• The list goes on!
If one banana can generate enough energy to charge an iPhone twice, can you imagine the potential of your Christmas dinner scrapings, peelings and more?
The roll-out of the innovative ‘Powering the Future with Food Waste’ scheme – which is being carried out with support from local Essex councils – has already seen thousands of rolls of caddy liners, stickers and leaflets delivered to suitable households in the Colchester, Braintree, Epping Forest, Tendring, Harlow and Uttlesford districts. More are due to be handed out to Basildon, Maldon and Rochford in the new year. All with hopes of drastically cutting the amount of food that enters landfill and giving food that invaluable second life
Essex County Council’s Councillor, Peter Schwier, Climate Czar and Cabinet Member for Environment, Waste Reduction and Recycling, said: “Christmas is a special time of year when residents can enjoy the festivities including lots of delicious food.
“But there is often food left over which will cause harm to the environment if it is put in a black bag headed for landfill.
“Instead, we hope the spirit of giving can live on after Christmas with recycled food waste going on to be put to good use.
“I’d like to wish all our residents a happy Christmas and a sustainable new year.”
Find out how you can get started on your food recycling journey in your local area today by visiting: www.loveessex.org/food-recycling.
