Kingswells Community Council

Aberdeen City Council's food waste collection service has been launched.

The launch coincided with the opening of Keenan Recycling's
innovative new facility in New Deer, where the food waste will be
treated and turned into compost. The first delivery of food waste from
the city will be delivered to the recycling plant today.

The city council has introduced collections of food waste from
19,500 city households which currently have brown bins. The service is
due to be rolled out to other households with brown bins - a total of
51,000 homes - later this year.

Aberdeen City Council is the first local authority in Scotland to
have such an extensive food waste collection and the move marks a
further step towards reducing the amount of waste Aberdeen sends to
landfill and cutting the volume of greenhouse gases the city produces.

Previously, food waste was collected along with residual (black bin)
waste and sent to landfill. Now it will be processed through Keenan
Recycling's new Vertical Composting Unit (VCU). The end product can be
used for a variety of applications including agriculture, horticulture
and landscaping

The company's £3.2 million expansion of its site at New Deer has
created the UK's largest VCU facility for recycling food waste, which
is set to deliver major benefits for the local community.

The installation of state-of-the-art in-vessel composting technology
will enable the firm to deliver a huge increase in the amount of food,
animal and garden waste being recycled and reduce the amount of
biodegradable material being sent to landfill. The use of in-vessel
chambers for recycling the waste into compost ensures that no
unpleasant odours are released at the site during the process.

Currently Keenan processes around 30,000 tonnes of green waste at
the site, where 11 people are employed, and the new technology will
provide an extra 20,000 tonnes of capacity to process kitchen waste.

The council's kerbside food waste collection service allows
residents to dispose of their food waste in an environmentally friendly
way, along with garden waste in their brown wheeled bins, while freeing
up space in their black wheeled bins. The council will continue to
collect brown bins fortnightly.

Councillor Ron Clark, chairman of the Waste Management Working Group
said: "Sending food waste to landfill is not only expensive in
financial terms, it carries a significant environmental cost too.

"Recycling our food waste by composting it is a very easy and
effective way to improve our green credentials and reduce the amount of
rubbish being buried in landfill sites.

"I am proud that Aberdeen City Council is taking the lead in food
waste production and being so proactive in tackling this important
environmental issue.

"This is an interesting and very important step for Aberdeen City
Council to take and I really hope that residents take advantage of this
new service.

"We all have a responsibility for the environment, and it is
incumbent on each of us to do what we can to reduce the amount of waste
we produce, and reduce the amount of rubbish we send to landfill.

"Composting our food waste is a really easy and practical way of doing that."

Keenan Recycling director Grant Keenan said: "We have worked with
Aberdeen City Council and SITA from day one, when the first brown
wheeled bins for garden waste were made available to the public and for
the past two years we have been working very closely to bring this
project to fruition.

"It now gives me great pleasure to see the vision realised and a
real sense of satisfaction to know that this new service will benefit
the environment, the tax payer, the local economy and help reduce
farmers' fertiliser bills."

Residents who are benefiting from the food waste collection service
from today have been provided with a kitchen caddy and biodegradable,
compostable bags which keep bins clean, reduce odour, and reduce
interference from flies, to put their food waste in.

Residents are asked to wait until they receive a kitchen caddy
before beginning to put food waste in the brown bin because the service
is being rolled out across the city in stages and the material
collected must be handled differently to "normal" garden waste.

The food waste will be collected fortnightly in your brown bin, together with your garden waste.

Items which can be disposed of as food waste include: beans; pasta;
rice; bread; cakes; pastries; dairy products including eggs and cheese;
meat and fish, including bones; tea bags and coffee grinds.

Items which cannot be disposed of in your brown bin include: animal
bedding or faeces, including hutch waste and cat litter; bottles; cans;
jars; food or drink containers; liquids, including oils and fats;
plastic bags (including degradable or biodgegradable bags).

This list is not exhaustive. If you have any questions regarding what
you can or cannot put in your brown bin, or any other queries, please
call the Waste Aware Team on 0845 6080919 or visit http://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/foodwaste

If you have any queries regarding this, or any other news story, please contact Aberdeen City Council on: 01224 522000.
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