The food recycling project

The food recycling project

The pilot

An initial pilot was rolled out to 12,000 households across Chelmsford in February 2022. 

Residents received a roll of liners and an information leaflet along with one of two stickers attached to their general rubbish bin. 

Half the households received a red ‘No food waste’ sticker, and the other half received a green sticker that read ‘Thank you for recycling your food waste’. This was to test which message inspired more residents to recycle their food. 

There was no significant difference in tonnage captured between the households that received the different stickers. The decision was made to go with WRAP’s best practice for the further roll-out, which was the red ‘No food waste’ sticker.

Further roll-out

Following the pilot, the remaining eligible 54,000 households in Chelmsford then received the intervention in 2022. 

Households with wheeled general rubbish bins 

From March 2023 to March 2024 deliveries were made across three phases to nine areas in total.

• Braintree, Colchester & Epping Forest
• Harlow, Tendring & Uttlesford
• Basildon, Maldon & Rochford

Residents that lived in participating areas received:

• a ‘no food in here please’ sticker secured to wheeled general rubbish bins
• a one-off delivery of a roll of compostable food caddy liners 
• an information leaflet about the benefits of recycling your food

The goals and measures of the project were:

• deliver a physical package made up of the three items to 375,000 eligible households 
• support the physical roll-out with county-wide and area-specific communications
• work in partnership with the nine Waste Collection Authorities (WCAs)
• achieve a 10% increase in food tonnage recycled at kerbside
• save £206,000 from avoided disposal

The project was a first of its kind at ECC. Never had the council delivered a project on such an extensive scale with physical deliveries made to households across the whole county. The scale and ambition of the project reflected the high proportion of food found in general rubbish and the need to increase participation in the long-standing food recycling services.

What the project achieved

The Food Recycling Project has far exceeded targets. The impact of the project so far:

• 375,108 households across the nine eligible areas received materials
• food recycling tonnage data shows an average increase of 21% when comparing first three-month post-delivery with previous year. This is more than double the target set. 
• initial avoided disposal cost savings are on track to exceed the project target
• an estimated reduction in CO2e emissions of over 90% based on shifting food waste from disposal at landfill to recovery at anaerobic digestion
• ongoing monitoring on tonnage, savings and CO2e emissions is taking place to understand the lasting impact of the intervention to understand whether further investment or intervention is required to maintain performance levels
• increased caddy requests from residents and operational feedback observing increased food recycling volumes and participation
• worked with 19 internal and external stakeholders in total
• various communications promoting the project including a BBC Essex radio interview, over 5.6 million impressions across Meta, YouTube, and Google, and an animated Rubbish Rumours series 

Households with black sacks for general rubbish

From October 2024 to January 2025 130,000 households across Brentwood, Castle Point and Colchester received a one-off delivery of compostable food caddy liners and an information leaflet. 

This phase differed to the others due to households in these areas having sack collections rather than wheeled bins for their general waste. This prevented best practice being followed as there was no opportunity for bin stickers. 

Although this didn’t have as much impact as the first phase, there was still an increase in food recycling tonnage collected after roll-out.

What’s next for food recycling?

ECC works to support the WCAs in improving and promoting the food recycling service available throughout Essex via ongoing promotional work regarding food recycling and service provision.

The council is eager to maintain the momentum of this project and continue investing in food recycling by:

• continuing to assess the tonnage data to provide both short and long-term impacts. This will inform ECC what further interventions are required and when
• investing in another food project targeting flats