News from West Suffolk Council – Better Recycling

You may be aware that last week the East Anglian Daily Times ran a misleading article titled ‘Suffolk food waste deal and Reydon plant plan collapses’.

This is not new information; we were aware that the deal had not progressed earlier this year so Suffolk County Council, who are the authority responsible for waste disposal, made alternative arrangements. In West Suffolk we bulk the food waste at the Operational Hub before it is transported to BioteCH4, an Anaerobic Digestion (AD) facility in March, Cambridgeshire. Once there the food waste is then made into:

• Biogas which is used as a renewable energy source to generate heat, electricity, and fuel, reducing our need for fossil fuels.
• Biofertiliser which is a nutrient rich fertiliser which will be spread on farmers’ fields across East Anglia.

The new food waste collections started on the 1 June, and I am pleased to say that in the first five days we collected 77,000 kilogrammes of food waste.

The food is being collected across West Suffolk by the crews using our 10 new food waste collection vehicles. To make the collections as smooth and safe as possible the food waste from the caddies is collected in specific brown bins that only fit on the automatic lifts on the food waste vehicles (see attached images). We do have some variations in vehicles collecting the food waste; however, these are only collecting food waste, and I can assure you that wheelie bins being used are not garden waste or general waste bins.

To ensure the new service works effectively, we have optimised our collection rounds, this has meant changes to collection days and weeks for some residents. It also means our crews are learning new rounds, so please be patient as we all adjust to this change.

We do anticipate some missed collections where residents have had changes and the crews navigate new rounds. If residents contact you to say they put their bin out on the correct day and have not had their bin emptied, please direct them to report it here or call the council on 01284 757320.

The EADT have been contacted about how irresponsible their headline was and a request for some balance in their reporting about the rollout of Better Recycling has been made.

Kind regards,

Cllr Dave Taylor