Recycling Food Waste in Scotland

Many households in Scotland throws away food every week. According to the UK government’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign, Scots chuck out 650,000 tonnes of food - worth around £800m - every year. It amounts to about one-third of all food that Scots buy. And around half of the food tossed away is still edible when it is thrown away.

In April, East Renfrewshire council will be the first local authority in Scotland to launch a dedicated kerbside collections of food waste. The goal will serve two aims - firstly, to divert this waste from landfill; and secondly, to make people think about how much food they are wasting. The waste will be made into fertiliser.

Food waste is considered a major problem. If Scots were to cut back the current levels of food waste by half, they would prevent 1.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. This is according to the Scottish Government. This is partly accounted for by the food’s “embedded” energy - that is, the energy used in growing and transporting the food - but also from the landfilling process. When it goes to landfill, food breaks down to produce methane. Methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse-effect gas than carbon dioxide.