Food waste collections are due to start in a phased process across Brighton and Hove from next year, the council’s waste management boss said yesterday (Tuesday 19 November).
Melissa Francis, head of Cityclean, the council’s rubbish and recycling service, shared an update at a Brighton and Hove City Council housing management panel.
She was replying to Green councillor Raphael Hill who asked how collections would be managed on housing estates.
Councillor Hill’s ward, Roundhill, includes the Sylvan Hall estate which has experienced issues with fly-tipping around the blocks’ communal bins.
Ms Francis said that the council had been looking at how other councils had set up their service and was looking to issue residents with food caddies for a weekly kerb-side food waste collection.
She said: “In flats, we’re looking at communal food bins – ones that are very secure. They’re metal and hygienic.
“We also need to look at the communal bins. We’re looking at how food waste collection for those areas will work in a later phase.”
Currently, the only options for food waste recycling in Brighton and Hove are to compost at home or through a community scheme.
About 10 million tonnes of food is estimated to be wasted across Britain every year, with much sent to landfill.
But by the end of March 2026, all councils are required to have weekly food waste recycling services, in line with the Environment Act 2021.
In March, the former Conservative Recycling Minister Robbie Moore announced funding of £295 million for those councils that did not have an existing food recycling scheme.
The funding was intended to cover new food waste containers for homes and specialist collection vehicles.
“But by the end of March 2026, all councils are required to have weekly food waste recycling services, in line with the Environment Act 2021.”
So they are doing it because they have to essentially – imagine Labour will trumpet this like an achievement when the truth seems to be that the council has resisted introducing food waste collections for years, and years and are only now doing it because national legislation has changed meaning they have to. Sigh.
Just like a whole slew of councils across the country – no matter which party is in control of them – are now having to do.
They have all get funds from previous government to implement food waste collection by 2026
The only flaw in your comment is that it was a big part of my prospective Labour councillor’s sales pitch pre the local elections. I didn’t vote for her but at least she’s making at one thing she promised actually happen.
The bigger question should be why are B&H 20 years behind Merton council where I used to live back in 2004 and had my food waste collected regularly…
It’s been in the pipeline for years because the legislation passed in 2021 after going through a long parliamentary process, so councillors (and candidates) will have known that there would be a legal duty for councils to provide a food waste collection. Therefore you Labour candidate would have been quite safe to make that promise because whoever was elected, from whichever party, would have had to make it happen by the Government’s deadline.
The reason some councils have done it sooner and some haven’t, in many ways comes down to political will historically (ie before the new legislation passed in 2021). There has been an issue in more recent years (post 2021) that councils have held off introducing it as they may miss out on new burdens money, which is funding they get from central government if national legislation places a new statutory duty (and therefore cost) on local councils. Because the Govt was vague for several years about when the deadline to introduce collections would be, and how much new burdens funding there would be, there was a risk that if councils introduced a food waste collection service until details had been finalised, it may be considered they had an existing collection service, so therefore it wasn’t a ‘new burden’ for them.
In 2015 the then Labour Leader Gill Mitchell explained that it wasn’t a priority for her administration because they wanted to get the existing refuse and recycling service “working effectively, rather than adding new services to it.” We’ve all seen how that’s panned out!!
The food waste collection grant “new burden funding” this council are can receive for 2023/24 is £2,443,812 – if you’re interested the funding is online here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-waste-collection-funding-2023-to-2024/food-waste-collection-grant-determination-2024-no-317069. Hope that helps answer your question!
“Ms Francis said that the council had been looking at how other councils had set up their service” It’s laughable isn’t it; it’s like we were looking at some sort of cutting edge new technology, like AI or something – not a service that some councils have been providing for literally decades. My sister, who lives in Guildford, just can’t believe we don’t have it in Brighton. It’s just collecting some food, not nuclear fusion. And plenty of other places have flats; it’s not some exclusive Brightonian quirk. The only unique quality we appear to have, is that for a supposedly progressive city, our recycling is consistently abysmal 😡
Is because B&H and ESCC are tied to Veolia site at Newhaven only this pressure and funding from government made Veolia introduce food waste processing
Yhey can’t even do normal collections on time!
What exactly is ‘food waste?
Nothing edible goes to waste in my home – and maybe I don’t over buy – but vegetable cuttings and any leftover food just gets composted.
So what are the council actually collecting?
What is the source of the problem here?
And why does it matter when food waste goes to landfill?
If you separate most food from the packaging and then bury it, most of it will just break down and turn into soil.
Seems to me that instead of a specialist collection service, a bit of education wouldn’t go amiss.
In Brighton and Hove anything that is not recycled gets incinerated at the Newhaven facility to generate electricity.
Not sure what the benefit of collecting and processing food waste is if we need to buy more vehicles and employ more staff‽
It will get collected separately and then burned in the incinerator probably, but a grant was gained from central government.
Hope the grant covers the council’s additional costs – to achieve nothing more than just putting food waste in the normal bins.
There’s never as food thrown out in my house, if people have ‘food waste’ they need to look at why they are wasting food, they could be saving money by looking at what food they buy and what is actually needed if they need excess food to be collected.
I totally agree, why are people wasting food? I very rarely throw anything out, if it is about to turn, cook it… if veggies go soggy, make soup… ignore use by and best before dates and use the small test… finally if something needs to be thrown out I always feed it to our beloved seagulls… hence no food waste in my household…
that should be smell not small
There’s a lot of people who aren’t confident with maximising what they do with food!
Food waste is things like eggshells, potato/ fruit /vegetable peelings and stuff you wouldn’t normally eat like that. It is considered food waste. It obviously includes uneaten food as well but like you, there is none of that in my house!!
Unfortunately if sent to landfill and buried, food waste gives off methane (anerobic decomposition). Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, so this is the main reason we need to compost waste properly (aerobic decomposition). The resulting product can also be used to fertilise our soil, so a win win!
Here’s a great article which explains more! https://www.compostconnect.org/composting-methods/
I agree with you Billy+Short, the only waste, food related, things I have are items such as peelings which get composted. I don’t have takeaways and only buy and cook what is needed, not for second helpings that don’t get used. If I cook more than I portion, it’s planned and the rest gets chilled or frozen for later. Maybe it’s a bit age related, I was around for rationing and shortages, not just in the UK but abroad too, and was always taught to avoid wasting anything valuable like food. Do schools still have Domestic Science lessons, portion control and quantity management was part of them?
Well I hope that when this scheme is introduced the council make a better job of it than their present abysmal performance in collecting general waste and recycling which are frequently uncollected on the appropriate day.
I’m paying £94 per year to have the garden waste I cannot compost collected and they are currently missing every other collection. Reporting the missed collections achieves nothing and I’m currently going through a formal complaints procedure about the lack of service.
If I were you I’d make a formal complaint to the council and get a refund as they are not providing the service you’re paying for. If they dismiss your complaint then you can take it to the local gov and social care ombudsman.
When I was down in Cornwall back in September, where I stayed had a fortnightly food waste collection which seemed to work very well. You are given a small “caddy” to keep either in your kitchen or somewhere close to it and you line the caddy with biodegradable bags. When the caddy is full you put it in a larger external bin which is then placed outside your house or flat for collection once a fortnight. For those who are unsure of what food waste is, it is basically anything that is organic which you either haven’t eaten because it’s past it’s use by date or cooked too much, or is not normally edible stuff such as the green bits of cauliflowers, sprout peelings, eggshells, potato peelings. You do get a list of what is recyclable and what isn’t. I generally don’t have a problem with recycling but I do when it isn’t collected. Brighton & Hove council are quite honestly dreadful when it comes to Rubbish & recycling and until that is rectified, I cannot see too much enthusiasm for food recycling here at the moment, government rules or not!
One thing for certain with Global cooling the food bins won’t smell. i hope the bins will be secure there are loads of rats about .