Reading’s food waste bin collection pilot starts this week for 3,000 households.

The ‘early adopters’ scheme – allowing 3,000 households to test the scheme in advance – begins this week on 61 roads across pilot areas of the town.

Food waste bin collections will take place on the same day as your red bin recycling collection, with the first ever collections starting today.

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You can find out when your collection day is by clicking here.

Councillor Adele Barnett-Ward, Reading Borough Council’s (RBC) lead member for Neighbourhoods and Communities, said: “Food waste collections are a vital step in helping Reading achieve higher recycling rates.

“Recycling more benefits the environment and means the council can reduce the amount of council tax-payers’ money going on landfill fees.

“That’s why we have set a target for Reading to reach a 55 per cent recycling rate by 2025.”

Households will get small, five-litre indoor kitchen food caddies, accompanied by larger 23-litre outdoor food bins for houses and food waste bins for flats, which will be emptied weekly.

With more than 40 per cent of the weight of an average grey general waste bin made up of food waste, the scheme provides an opportunity for households to vastly increase the amount they recycle.

Residents will be able to use their caddies to recycle everything food related, from plate scrapings and bones to fruit and vegetable peelings, egg shells, tea bags, stale bread and used cooking oil presented in plastic bottles.

The majority of residents will have their food caddies delivered from January 4, 2021, and will be able to recycle their food waste every week from February 1.

The new food waste collection service is being accompanied by 140l general waste bins replacing the current 2,40l grey bins, with research showing that the reduction encourages greater levels of recycling.

The old bins will be taken away to be reused or recycled into new bins.

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Households that currently have large or multiple grey bins and still need the extra capacity will be able to contact the council so it can assess their needs.

You can also get an extra free red recycling bin or box if needed at www.reading.gov.uk/environment/waste-and-recycling/order-a-bin-or-bag/.

Re3 estimates that if each household in Reading recycles 1kg of food (the equivalent of a bag of apples) each week, it will have the same environmental impact as taking 8,700 cars off the road in terms of the amount of methane captured at the anaerobic digestion plant during the food recycling process.

As this is then converted into electricity on site, it would create enough energy to power 315 homes on ongoing basis.