Councillors in Hertsmere have been finding out about food waste recycling, which is coming to the borough next year.
Several councillors from Hertsmere Borough Council had a tour around the Severn Trent Green Power North London Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Facility in London Colney, to learn about what happens to food waste, as the council prepares to launch weekly food waste collections in April 2025.
Just one tonne of food waste collected can power 62 homes for a day. If every household in our borough recycles their food waste, we can create enough power to run over 900 homes per year!
The gas created by what we throw anyway is converted to electricity and injected back into the national grid and the remaining by-product is turned into organic fertiliser – nothing is wasted.
Cllr Paul Richards, Portfolio Holder for Environmental Sustainability and Net Zero and Public Health, said: “Weekly food waste collections are key to our plans to improve recycling in Hertsmere, reduce avoidable waste and meet our environmental commitments.
“We collect from 45,000 properties across the borough, so adding a weekly food waste recycling stream to our kerbside collections will make a significant impact to our green agenda and ensure less rubbish is sent to landfill.
“It’s hard to imagine that your plate scrapings, stale bread, mouldy food, tea and coffee bags, meat and fish bones can be used to create sustainable energy, which is injected back into the national grid, and to create organic fertiliser, which is spread locally. There is power in those peelings!
“Food waste is the most common contaminant of the council’s dry recycling service and currently accounts for about 27% of waste found in the black bin. The introduction of a weekly food waste collection not only creates sustainable energy, reduces our carbon footprint and increases recycling, but also reduces the likelihood of other recycling being sent to landfill due to contamination.
“We’ll keep residents up to date in the run up to the launch of weekly food waste collections in April 2025, so keep an eye out for communications from us.”
To ensure residents get behind the scheme, households will be provided with a 23 litre silver recycling bin and a free pack of kitchen caddy liners before the new service launches.
Cllr Richards added: “By engaging with the scheme, residents can help stop food waste going to landfill where it rots and releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. It is also cheaper to recycle food waste, with every lorry load of food recycled instead of being sent to landfill saving £100 per tonne than emptying your black bin.”
During the visit to the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Facility councillors followed the food waste journey through the building, which processes 50,000 tonnes of solid and liquid waste every year.
The process starts with food waste being separated from any contaminants like plastic bags, then mixed with liquid waste effectively being turned into ‘food soup’ before being sent over to the digestion tanks. The tanks act similar to the biological process inside all of us when we eat food. Heated micro-organisms eat away at the decomposing food for about 80-90 days, giving off methane, which is burned to turn a generator and make renewable energy.
The energy generated in the Severn Trent Green Power process in London Colney can cover 6,000 local homes and has the net greenhouse benefit of taking 80,000 cars off the road, with the leftovers, called digestate, used to fertilise local farm land.
Learn more about the London Colney plant, visit Food Waste Recycling | Severn Trent Green Power (stgreenpower.co.uk)
Find out more about the weekly food waste collections.
Posted on Monday 30th September 2024