‘Eco’ food waste collections offered to East London’s ‘Curry Mile’ restaurants

Food and restaurant businesses in East London are being targeted for a commercial waste collection service to help prepare for new regulations.

An “eco-friendly” waste service is being marketed by Biffa at £7 a lift, aimed at diverting food waste from landfill sites by sending it instead to “anaerobic digestion” plants to be converted into energy.

Recycling is now being used in tackling the £15m tonnes of food waste produced every year in Britain, with as much as 40 per cent currently ending up in landfill.

Regulations have already come into force in Scotland where businesses producing more than 50kg of waste a week are now required to make arrangement for separate collections, which is being extended down to 5kg from January.

“We can help businesses prepare for new regulations,” the company’s commercial business director Dave Wakelam said. “Diverting away from landfill sides is becomes the focus of waste management policy.”

Tower Hamlets council’s contractors already run separate food waste collections in London’s East End in areas like Brick Lane’s ‘Curry Mile’ used by Spitalfields restaurant owners, as part of the business licensing system.

Around 85 per cent of all waste generated in the East End went to landfill sites back in 2008—putting Tower Hamlets on the very bottom rung of Britain’s recycling league table. It led the local authority top bring in separate weekly ‘kitchen waste’ collections that year, with almost half of all household waste being food.

Legislation for recycling food waste separate from household and industrial waste are expected to become law throughout the UK in the near future.