By introducing segregated food waste collections into your collection scheme, local authorities can reduce the costs of collecting and treating waste, allowing funds to be spent elsewhere. Source segregated collections have also been shown to reduce food waste and divert waste from landfill. In one example, Bexley Council in East London switched from weekly refuse and fortnightly recycling collections to segregated recycling and green waste collections, resulting in a 20% reduction in waste and a saving of over £1m by the second year.

Separate food waste collections have been proven to reduce overall waste levels, helping to meet waste reduction targets and reducing landfill tax. Alongside the carbon benefit of treating food waste through AD, source segregated collections also reduce wet organic contamination of dry recyclable material (such as paper, plastic and glass) allowing better quality – and therefore higher value – products to be created.

Separate food waste collections and AD facilities have proven to be popular with local residents: an Icaro study found that households who had a weekly food waste collection awarded the service 7.9/10, while 87% of respondents supported AD as a waste treatment option. A 2011 Friends of the Earth study found that 82% of residents who had a food waste collection supported the service.

A vibrant AD sector provides long-term jobs in a number of sectors in both rural and urban areas, including construction, farming, transport, waste collection and high-skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs. Unlike some other renewables, AD will continue to keep people directly employed through the lifetime operation of a plant. And if the AD sector reaches its potential, then it’s capable of supporting 35,000 jobs across the UK.

Defra identified in their 2011 Review of Waste Policy that there are approximately 16 million tonnes of food waste produced each year, which, if treated by AD, would save well over 1.2 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in GHG emissions. This food waste is largely in the control of local authorities, giving you a huge opportunity to contribute to cutting GHG emissions by sending organic waste to AD, while also achieving significant savings by avoiding the rising cost of landfill tax. GHG savings can also be achieved by supporting the use of biomethane vehicles in refuse collection and other council vehicles.

With Britain facing fines of up to £300million due to air pollution, fines that are likely to be passed to local authorities, tackling air quality through the introduction of biomethane vehicles which have been proven to slash nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions, is a relatively simple solution. On top of this, biomethane is typically the most efficient use of biogas and can be used in existing natural gas engines, especially good for decarbonising HGVs, buses and waste collection vehicles in the transport sector.