Build compost plant demand (From thisisoxfordshire)

Build compost plant demand

12:30pm Friday 8th September 2006 in

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A food recycling centre is being proposed to help Oxfordshire deal with its mounting waste crisis.

District councils say weekly household collections of food and kitchen waste could help usher in a new era of recycling in the county.

They are pressing Oxfordshire County Council to invest £1m to build a modern 'in vessel' recycling plant which could turn waste food into compost. Such plants are already in use in Somerset, Cambridgeshire, Devon and Dorset.

Households across Oxfordshire are facing fortnightly rubbish collections as part of a new county-wide approach to reducing waste.

District councils are to demand weekly food collections and recycling as the price for backing the new 'Oxfordshire Joint Municipal Strategy'.

The strategy has taken more than two years to negotiate and includes a whole array of policies designed to reduce waste from homes, in order to avoid crippling Government fines.

The introduction of fortnightly collections has become one of the most contentious issues, and the districts say householders' worries can be overcome if kitchen and food waste was separated from general household waste and collected weekly.

West Oxfordshire's cabinet on Wednesday voted to introduce fortnightly rubbish collections, with weekly food waste collections as an important rider. Oxford City Council may follow course on Monday.

The city council has told County Hall that recycling food would divert significant amounts of waste from landfill and give householders the chance to recycle more.

The council's business manager Philip Dunsdon said: "This is an area of development that would be particularly attractive to most of the districts and would allow the collection of kitchen waste from households either as a stand alone service or combined with garden waste collections."

Chris Cousins, for the county council, said: "The idea of food recycling is definitely on the agenda. In-vessel composting is one of the things under active consideration."

But it appears that the county would hope that a commercial operator would be prepared to foot the bill for any multi-million pound food treatment centre. The county would than pay fee of about £40 a tonne of food waste delivered.

It is unlikely that food recycling could be fully introduced across the county for another two years, with some of the district councils having to wait until contracts with waste collection companies end.

Somerset opened its in-vessel composting system last year after it was found that 28 per cent of household waste involved food.

However, the county council said it may still be forced to incinertate some of its waste.