Rollout of food waste recycling collections at flats in Elmbridge

3,000 more households living in flats in Elmbridge are now able to recycle their food waste.

These new households join the weekly food waste recycling collections that already take place in the borough, with waste collection crews collecting from over 60,000 households every week including flats. 

To encourage participation, the project team provided residents at each household with an indoor food waste caddy, a roll of caddy liners to get them started, a leaflet explaining how the service works, why it is good to recycle food waste and what food waste to start putting in their caddies.

The project in Elmbridge is the final part of a programme to provide all flats in Surrey with a food waste recycling service, with 21,800 flatted households having been added to collections since July 2022.

It is estimated that adding these households to weekly food waste collections in Elmbridge should divert approximately 140 tonnes of food waste a year from rubbish bins, meaning that it will be recycled and turned into electricity, heat and transport fuels instead of going to an energy from waste facility - good news for both the taxpayer and the environment.

This latest rollout is now being monitored closely and so look out for the results which should be available to share in the spring.  

This project was delivered by the Surrey Environment Partnership (SEP),which is hosted by  Surrey County Council, in collaboration with officers from the East Operations Team at Joint Waste Solutions (JWS) - the team that manages recycling and waste services in Elmbridge, Mole Valley, Surrey Heath and Woking.