Peterborough City Council explain why weekly food waste collections won't be available to every resident by Government deadline
Peterborough City Council is set to miss a Government deadline for all residents to have weekly food waste collections.
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said "every household in England" would get weekly food waste collections from March 31 under new legislation.
A BBC investigation revealed one in four councils are set to miss the deadline – including Peterborough.
Many Peterborough residents do have the weekly collections, with vegetable scraps being collected in the grey food caddy by bin crews.
The system was initially rolled out in 2012 – but some properties – mainly flats – still do not have food waste collections.
The council hope that all properties will have food collections by the end of the spring.
Councillor Angus Ellis, Cabinet Member for Transport and Environment said: "We first introduced weekly food waste collections for houses in the city back in 2012, 14 years before there was a national requirement to do so.
"The final part of the roll-out focusses on flats and other properties with communal waste arrangements and has been more complex because it has required significant engagement with housing providers, managing agents and residents, to enable us to design suitable communal collection arrangements that works for those residents.
"Despite the complexities of this we have made good progress and to date, food waste collections have been introduced at 165 communal housing locations across the city.
"Our internal target was to complete this roll-out by May and we are confident all remaining flats will have a food collection service by then."
Peterborough City Council said that last year, they disposed of almost 40,000 tonnes of household waste from black bin (general waste) collections. This waste went to the city's Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) in Fengate.
The council say that they estimate that almost one third of this was food waste, which could have been put in the grey (food waste) bins. Recycling food waste by putting it in your grey food bin is better for the environment and saves the council around £870,000 a year in disposal costs.
Collected food waste is sent to an anaerobic digestion facility in Hertfordshire where it's turned into fertiliser for agriculture and biogas which is used to generate renewable electricity for homes.