As a Lambeth Neighbourhood Champion for my road, I and others have been advised by the Recycling department at the Council that there is a recent trend for some residents to recycle items they should not be putting in garden waste bags or kitchen waste caddies.
As a result, I have been asked to pass on some advice to clarify what we all should be recycling correctly.
It seems that food and waste loads have contained unacceptable amounts of material which can’t be composted – some of this could be soil or litter that ended up in garden waste bags, but mainly appears to be caused by people using non-biodegradable plastic bags to line food waste kitchen caddies.
Lambeth’s food waste is mixed with garden waste and sent to an in-vessel composting facility which is unable to handle the plastic, so this means it’s treated as contamination – not just the plastic, but the contents as well. If there are too many plastic bags in a load, the whole load can be rejected and must be disposed of as refuse instead.
As much as 90% of these rejected loads is made up of good food and garden waste so it is extremely unfortunate that this ends up being incinerated instead of composted.
The majority of people use compostable caddy liners, or don’t use them at all and simply rinse their caddies out after emptying. However, there are a few households that use plastic bags.
Please switch to compostable liners or newspaper (which is what I do) to line your caddies, or don’t line them at all. Crews will in future NOT empty food waste bins containing plastic bags.
As a reminder re garden waste, all leaves, weeds, twigs, small branches (cut up) etc, NO soil.
Kitchen waste – fruit and vegetable peelings, chicken bones and general food waste (egg shells can be composted).
If you need any advice or help, please call me on 07772 025131.
Mike Morfey