Mid Sussex residents recycle 29 tonnes of food waste in trial of new collection system

Residents in the trial areas have been placing any food waste into a dedicated bin, which is then collected from the kerbside each week.

The council said the aim of the trial is to boost recycling and reduce the amount of general waste produced.

Mid Sussex District Council’s deputy leader John Belsey said: “I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who is working with us to trial this new collection system and reduce the amount of food that goes in our general waste bins. By collecting our food waste separately we can ensure it is being put to good use. Once collected, it’s taken to a specialist facility and placed in an anaerobic digester, which uses the gas that is produced when the food breaks down to generate energy and turns the left-over material into a soil fertiliser.”

He explained that a lorry load of food waste can generate enough renewable energy to power 20,000 televisions for an hour.

The selected trial areas have been parts of Ashurst Wood, Burgess Hill and Lindfield, and they include a mix of housing types and locations to make sure trial is representative of Mid Sussex. The council said that if people in the trial area keep recycling food at their current rate then more than 377,000 kilograms (377 tonnes) of it will be removed from rubbish and recycled over a year.

The trial will help Mid Sussex District Council and West Sussex County Council see whether they can roll out a similar service across the whole of Mid Sussex.

West Sussex County Council Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change Deborah Urquhart said: “Residents have done a tremendous job of recycling their food waste so far and I would like to thank each and every one of them sincerely for their efforts. We’ve already received lots of valuable feedback from residents and we will continue to take it all on board as the trial progresses. Your experiences will help us to provide a greener service in the future, with improved recycling rates.”