Saving unused food from being wasted
Published
Thursday 4 September, 2025
Updated
Thursday 4 September, 2025
Swale’s residents helped save an extra 60 tonnes of unused food (imagine 1,200,000 banana peels!) from being wasted during a campaign to promote free caddies and stop contamination.
Swale Borough Council, Kent County Council and SUEZ teamed up to place stickers on people’s general waste bins to promote the use of the council’s free food waste bins.
The stickers, which rolled out earlier this year along with free bin liners, asked people to save space in their green bins by using a food waste caddy.
Food waste bins are emptied each week into a transfer bin, which can be blue, green or black, and is then emptied into a separate compartment at the side of the collection vehicle.
The food waste makes its way to a local anaerobic digestion plant where it gets repurposed to create electricity and help farmers produce the food that you eat.
Here your leftover food goes through a chain of complex biological processes creating biomethane gas that powers the plant and can be fed to the National Grid to generate power for homes.
The remaining material (digestate) is rich in nutrients and produces an excellent organic fertiliser which gets used on local farms.
An incredible 7,942 caddies have been ordered during the campaign – which has led to a delay in delivery – and the council is asking people to be patient as they work through these orders.
From April 2026 food waste services become compulsory across the nation so the council are promoting the service in preparation for this change.
Cllr Dolley Wooster, chair of the council’s Environmental Services and Climate Change Committee, said:
“We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ordered their free food waste caddies, and we are pleased to see so many residents buying into helping us reuse their leftovers!
“It really is a win-win situation - we remove your food waste weekly keeping your green bin cleaner, it costs us less, produces electricity and can be made into fertilisers for our farmers.
“We also want to remind you to not to put food waste in with your recycling because we won’t collect it, just a few people contaminating their recycling can ruin whole vehicle loads and cost us, and you the taxpayer, thousands.
“Please continue helping us get the most out of our waste by using all three bins correctly and order your free food waste caddy if you haven’t already, but please be patient as we send them out.”
The campaign is not only promoting the use of food waste bins – it is also working to tackle the high levels of contamination in recycling collected from across Swale, by promoting the free food waste bins.
Food waste is one of the most common contaminants and will lead to entire vehicle loads being discarded, costing the council and the taxpayer thousands of pounds.
It’s estimated that each load of recycling that gets rejected due to contamination costs around £2,000, as it costs much more to burn the waste.
If your recycling is contaminated, it won't be emptied and will be “locked out”, with information explaining why it hasn’t been collected being attached to your bin.
Your waste will only be collected at your next scheduled collection if the contamination has been removed.
You can find out more about food waste here, or order your free food waste bin and kitchen caddy online here.
