FEARS that kitchen waste is still going into landfill, despite the new waste separation scheme launched this week, have been allayed today.
Following correspondence from a ThameNews.Net visitor yesterday – see LINK
and several phone calls to South Oxfordshire District Council, the council has issued an explanation for how the new system works.
A spokesperson for SODC told ThameNews.Net: “I can tell you that food waste is collected by use of a ‘slave bin’ which looks like a grey wheeled bin attached to the back of the truck. All food waste is emptied into this before being emptied into the truck. The trucks have two compartments – one for waste or recycling (depends on the collection) and one for food waste. So while it may look like it’s all being dumped into the same truck it is actually being emptied into separate compartments.”
District and Town Councellor, David Dodds, explained that the contractors may use a bin of any colour, one that perhaps has no lid or unusable for some other reason, as the so-called ‘slave bin’ so it may have looked as though kitchen waste was being put into a general waste bin.
“Actually,” continued Cllr Dodds, “more kitchen waste was collected on Monday than was anticipated which will all go to help reduce the amount of waste going into landfill.”
In the Thame and Wheatley area on Monday, 10.7 tonnes of food waste was collected and delivered to a processing plant. If this tonnage is maintained, it will be roughly equivalent to removing 10% of the previous residual waste that went to landfill.
Despite some teething problems with the new scheme, the collection generally went well in Thame, though some bins were not emptied, particularly on the north side of the Upper High Street.
Photo: Some of the kitchen waste collected from the Thame and Wheatley area on Monday, launch day of the new scheme to collect separated waste.
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