Since the start of the year, I’ve been taking part in the City of Portsmouth’s Food Waste recycling trial. Perhaps not officially, you understand, but through the good offices of a close friend who lives in Portsmouth and has spare space in her own caddy.
I was initially sceptical about the claim made by PCC that up to 40% of domestic waste is bio digestible food waste. However, several months into this experiment I confess to being amazed by the sheer volume and weight of organic food waste that I produce. Equally surprising has been that the simple act of separating out food waste from your domestic bin actually highlights the amount of non-recyclable plastic which HBC are still not able to process.
Once collected the food waste is being transported in bulk to a plant near Bournemouth for treatment where it is converted into biogas and used to generate electricity, heat or transport fuels. It also creates a nutrient-rich fertiliser which can be used for agriculture and in land regeneration. So successful has the scheme been that PCC are already studying the feasibility of building their own processing facility.
We think it would be a fine, green initiative for HBC’s partners in East Hants District Council to build such a facility on their patch to which HBC could send our own food waste. That would seem to be a splendid way of ‘Shaping our Future‘!
Hats off to Portsmouth City Council, who also still manage to collect both domestic waste and food waste on a weekly basis. Oh, and before anybody asks the obvious question, their Council Tax rates are lower than ours!
#rethinkhavant
Havant Civic Society 
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