Date: 06/04/2010
From Monday 12 April , High Peak residents will able to put food scraps in their green-lidded wheelie bin for recycling.
The development is a major improvement to the Borough Council's kerbside collection scheme and underlines its commitment to increasing the amount of household waste recycled.
And the council is promoting the expanded service with a series of road shows at which kitchen caddies for food waste are being given away on a first-come-first-served basis while stocks last.
If the caddies run out, they can be bought online or from many supermarkets.
By the time the new service goes live, a detailed information booklet will have been delivered to every household to spell out what people need to do and to promote the road shows.
Along with garden waste and cardboard, the food waste will be taken to a new, state-of-the-art composting facility managed by Derbyshire County Council at the Waterswallows recycling site, near Buxton.
Said Councillor John Haken, Executive Councillor for the Environment: "The addition of cooked and raw food waste to the kerbside recycling service is great news for the many residents who've been telling me they want to recycle their food.
"By recycling food, residents will be reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill at a time when the cost of burying food in the ground continues to climb.
"And it couldn't be easier. All people need to do is put their peelings and other food scraps in their green-lidded wheelie bin, then just put it out for collection as normal", he explained.
The amount of waste recycled in High Peak rose from 10.7 per cent in 2004/05 to more than 40 per cent last summer. Now, the addition of food waste to the kerbside recycling service will help take the borough way beyond the 40 per cent target set by the Government for 2012.
For more information on this big improvement to the kerbside recycling scheme, visit www.highpeak.gov.uk/environment/foodwaste.asp.
Remaining road show dates are as follows: