North Devon food waste to be recycled for AD

According to the North Devon Gazette, 60 tonnes of food waste collected in North Devon will no longer be sent to landfill. Instead, North Devon Council (NDC) will be sending all the food waste that households put into kitchen caddies to an anaerobic digestion plant in Holsworthy. Once at the AD plant, the waste is to be turned into electricity and fertiliser.

The local news outlet reports that council lorries now pick up close to 54 to 60 tonnes of food waste per week with nearly 1.5million tonnes up to September.

Rodney Cann, executive member for waste and recycling, told the North Devon Gazette “The sad news is that we are wasting so much food, but the good news is it’s no longer going to landfill. Now our lorries won’t have to be transporting it to landfill at Deepmoor-it will be put into a skip and taken once a day.”

Devon County Council is responsible for the safe disposal of all county generated household waste. Andrea Davis, Councillor and cabinet member for infrastructure, development and waste has reportedly said that a county wide estimation of 1,800 black bins found that around 30% was food waste.  And that nearly 40% of the black bins contents could be recycled under the current system.

Davis added, “There’s a huge amount of food waste going into black bins and if we all made a bit more effort we could make a difference.”

The Councillor also states that sending this material to waste instead of recycling is costing the authority £6.7million ($8.8million) per year.