Shoppers urged - ‘Cut food waste and save cash’

SHOPPERS are being urged to curb their excesses in the run-up to Christmas as a council launches a new drive to cut food waste.

East Riding Council, one of Yorkshire’s leading recycling authorities, has just released its recycling rate for September, which at 59 per cent was two per cent up on the same month last year.

But although the authority has welcomed the improvement, which followed an ongoing roll-out of fortnightly bin collections, it is now shifting focus to ask for a cut in waste after revealing that the overall volumes remain the same.

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Coun Symon Fraser, portfolio holder for environment, housing and planning, said: “We are not preaching to people about it, but there’s obvious benefits for people in terms of making their purchase decisions more carefully and on considering the waste implications of that - the main issue being there’s an opportunity to save money by being a bit more savvy about their purchase decisions and how they go about buying food products.

“It seems bizarre that we have got people setting up food banks to provide food to people in desperate situations and at the other end of the scale we have got food being thrown out.

“There’s a need to encourage people to be more conscious of what they are doing with food and the savings they could achieve for their families from thinking more about their purchase decisions.”

The call comes days after supermarket giant Tesco revealed it had generated almost 30,000 tonnes of food waste in the first six months of the year.

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Of that figure, 21 per cent was made up of fruit and vegetables and 41 per cent of bakery items.

About 130,000 households in the East Riding switched to fortnightly collections of blue recycling bins and green landfill bins, while the brown composting bin has been collected fortnightly since 2011.

The rise in the recycling rate means that an additional 700 tonnes - the weight of 88 double-decker buses - is kept out of landfill in just one month.

The council is also asking residents to take more care over which bins they use for waste, which could cut the amount of waste going to landfill even further.

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Coun Fraser said: “Residents are being true to their word when they told us they could recycle more of their household waste if they had fortnightly collections. These figures show just how successful that service is.

“One disappointing note is that food waste is still going in the green bins for landfill instead of the brown bins.

“In September, about a quarter of what was in the green bins was food waste.

“With Christmas round the corner, the message is to put the turkey carcass and sprout peelings in the brown bin so they can be taken away for composting.

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“The message is to wrap and stash, that is wrap the food waste in a caddy liner, that we give away for free, and stash it in the brown bins.

“Stock up on caddy liners by getting replacements from any of our customer service centres, leisure centres and libraries.”

Households across Bridlington, Driffield and Hornsea increased what they recycled by 68 per cent compared with September 2012, with an 18 per cent drop in what they put in their green landfill bins.

Goole will switch to fortnightly collections next summer.