Tens of thousands of Portsmouth homes are to join the city’s food waste recycling trial from next week.
Portsmouth residents will receive from this week their deliveries of food caddies to start participating in the city’s third and fourth phases of food waste recycling trial. The rounds will be introduced on a phased basis to ensure food caddy deliveries can be made in a timely way and support can be provided to residents.
| Phase 3 – Caddy delivery | From 20 September |
| Phase 3 – Food waste collection | From 27 September |
| Phase 4 – Caddy delivery | From 4 October |
| Phase 4 – Food waste collection | From 11 October |
The food waste will be collected weekly, on the same day as the rubbish collection. Phase three collections will start from 27 September, with collections for phase four starting on 11 October.
A full list of the roads participating in phase three and four can be viewed on our website at www.portsmouth.gov.uk/foodwastetrial
The expansion of the trial will double the size of the scheme, to see up to two-thirds of households in the city included. The plans see an additional 22,250 homes being part of the scheme, taking the total number of households participating in the trial to 50,000.
Cllr Dave Ashmore, Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Environment, said: “We are delighted to continue with the expansion of the food waste trial to include almost two-thirds of the city in the scheme. Portsmouth has had fantastic results from the trial; nearly 2,500 tonnes of food waste has been collected since the start of the trial. Portsmouth clearly has an appetite to increase our recycling efforts.
Food waste makes up a huge amount of people’s weekly rubbish and we continue to work hard to roll out the scheme city-wide.”
Cllr Kimberley Barrett, Cabinet Member for Climate Change & the Green Recovery, said: “We are committed to making our city greener and what better timing than to start delivering these caddies during Recycle Week 2021 to kick off the expansion.
“We are keen to continue raising more awareness of the impact of food waste and doing our bit for the environment. Recycling is a big issue locally and nationally and food waste is where we can make a really big difference.
“To help residents in their recycling efforts, we’ve put together six easy ways to reduce food waste at home – see www.portsmouth.gov.uk/food-waste for more information.”
During the trial, people in selected areas are supplied with a five-litre caddy for indoor use, a 23-litre caddy for the collection and one roll of fully compostable caddy liners free of charge. Residents can put all food leftovers, raw and cooked, in the caddies to recycling. Instead of being incinerated for energy, the waste is recycled and turned into energy, fuel and fertiliser.
The plans to recycle food waste were proposed after a waste analysis in autumn 2018 showed that 40% of black bag waste is made up of food waste, most of which is avoidable.
The first wave of the food waste trial was launched in September 2019 and was expanded to the second wave from September 2020. The expansion for phases three and four was approved in February 2021 as part of the council’s capital budget programme for 2021-22 which can only be spent on fixed projects like buildings and facilities, rather than the day-to-day running of council services.
