Talking half the rubbish

• Aug. 18 by Karl Stevens (1)

Birmingham Friends of the Earth have led an online e-petition asking Birmingham City Council to stop food waste going to incinerators with a seperate collection.

The petition urges the council to, alongside its current collections, add a separate collection from homes for food waste. Friends of the Earth believe that if Birmingham were to follow cities such as Swansea and Leeds, collections would reduce the amount of vermin in the city as well as possibly halving the amount of rubbish sent to landfill or incinerators.

Whilst the issue of vermin would be reduced, the food waste would then be composted en masse, locking up carbon and avoiding sending the waste to landfill where it produces methane in decomposition, which is argued as being the worst greenhouse gas.

Joe Peacock of Birmingham FoE said:

“If it can be kept separate, the remaining dry wastes can mostly be recycled. Both components could become a resource instead of a problem. Birmingham’s recycling rate could be doubled by 2020, and our rubbish mountain halved, or better. In fact this has to happen if the City Council’s own target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% is to be met.”

Currently a large proportion of waste from Birmingham homes is incinerated or sent to landfill, however the city council has made improvements in recent years on paper and plastics collections which have increased the amount of rubbish recycled and the council are already meeting its current targets on reducing carbon emissions. There are further plans to incentivise some forms of recycling which are to be announced next week.

A spokesman for Birmingham City Council said:

“At the moment we have no plans to add another collection alongside the ones we already have, we believe that it is cost prohibitive to include another collection from households, and we do believe that the best solution to this is that people compost at home. We do actively encourage people to compost their food waste at home, by teaming up with evergreener.com we now offer discount composters and wormeries, as well as bargain priced water butts.”

However the e-petition is still open and Friends of the Earth have said that this food waste could be better used by waste companies such as Biogen which has a number of plants in the Midlands.

These plants turn such waste into fertiliser to spread on fields, and gas, which is used to heat buildings or to generate electricity.

The petition is available to sign here, but if you are interested in composting at home then discount composters are available here.