Environmental Impact
The best environmental option is not to waste
food in the first place and Herefordshire Council and
Worcestershire County Council fully support the Love Food Hate
Waste Campaign which highlights the huge amount and cost of food
wasted in the UK. The campaign offers lots of practical
advice and handy tips such as recipes for leftovers and meal
planning.
We also support home composting as a way of dealing with food waste
such as vegetable peelings and banana skins and promote subsidised
compost bins for residents of Herefordshire and
Worcestershire. However a compost bin is not suitable for
everyone, for example someone who lives in a property without a
garden or a person with mobility problems may struggle to home
compost. In these situations a food waste disposer may be the
solution.
Worcestershire County Council has worked with The County Surveyors
Society and consultant Dr Tim Evans to produce an Environmental
Impact Study of Food Waste Disposers. You can currently download a
synopsis or the full report using the links below.
This study examines the financial and
environmental impacts of food waste disposers (FWD) and finds that
they provide a cost-effective, convenient and hygienic means of
separating putrescible domestic kitchen food waste (KFW) at source
and diverting it from landfill. The study also finds that this
route costs less and has a smaller global warming potential than
the routes comprising kerbside collection followed by centralised
composting or landfill.
Further to this we are an associated
stakeholder in a study being conducted by WRc – Research
Consultancy in Water, Waste and the Environment and are awaiting
the results:
CP342 Impact of Using Sewers for Food Waste
Disposal:
To examine this, and other issues, WRc has
engaged with key stakeholders, including Water Companies, Central;
Government and Local Government, to establish the National Food
Waste Disposal. The planned programme, comprises is being funded by
DEFRA and UKWIR and includes a series of co-ordinated and shared
cost projects. These include technical assessment of the impact of
using sewers to dispose of food and other mascerated waste and a
full sustainability assessment of the alternatives.
Link to WRC website
www.waterportfolio.com
This page was last reviewed 3 February 2011 at 10:13 by Matt Lambeth.
