Join Hackney’s food recycling experiment!

Hackney Council has launched a new campaign to encourage residents to save £1 million by recycling their food waste.

Hackney throws about 18,000 tonnes of food in the bin per year – enough to fill up London Fields Lido every week. This represents about one third of household rubbish, yet all of it could be recycled.

Hackney’s Food Recycling Experiment aims to dispel the myths about food waste recycling and encourage people to give it a try and see that it is cleaner and easier than throwing everything in a big kitchen bin.

The council collects food waste from 95% of households, and if all of them recycled as much as they could, the borough could save £1 million a year in disposal costs.

Residents are given small caddies to keep in their kitchen and free compostable liners. The waste is collected every week from people’s front gardens and communal bins in blocks of flats and estates.

Use your blue bin… and win

As part of the campaign, the council wants residents who have never recycled their food to give it a try and send in their results. Residents who already use the service can also get involved and send in their tips.

Anyone who shows that they are using the service and tells the council how they got on before 15 December will have a chance of winning £100. To enter, residents can tag posts on Twitter and Instagram with #HackneyFood, complete an online form or fill in a card sent to them in the post.

Cllr Feryal Demirci, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, said: “Hackney’s recycling services have improved dramatically over the last decade, and most people recycle paper, glass, metals and plastic. However, a lot of food is still needlessly thrown in the bin. Not only will recycling this food help us reduce the amount of money we have to spend on disposal, but it is good for the environment as it is turned into compost and used in our parks, gardens and allotments.

“Research shows that fears about mess and smells and people’s reluctance to make an effort are the main reasons that they do not recycle food waste. We have just started sending out new liners which are thicker and stronger than before, which makes taking the food waste out cleaner and easier than ever for residents.

“Having a small caddy which is emptied regularly is much cleaner than having one large bin with food and other rubbish mixed together. When you separate your food waste from other rubbish you can see how much food you throw away, which encourages you to only buy and cook the food you need.”

How it works