To help you recycle your food waste we will provide everyone with a silver coloured outside food caddy, a smaller silver coloured kitchen caddy for your counter top and a roll of liners (52 per roll).

Use the liners in the caddy to collect your waste food in your kitchen. When full, tie a knot in the liner and transfer it to the outdoor caddy. Present the outdoor caddy on collection day, with your other bin(s).

Your new caddy will be delivered within the boundary of your property, if you live in a terraced property, it will be delivered outside your front door.

For customers who are signed up for our assisted collection service the caddy will be delivered to the location we have agreed to collect your bins from.

All food waste will be taken in the caddy including meat and fish, raw and cooked including bones, dairy products, such as eggs/eggshells and cheese, raw and cooked vegetables and fruit, bread, cakes, pastries, rice, pasta, beans, tea bags and coffee grounds, out of date food and leftover foods from plates.

The liners will only be able to cope with a small amount of liquids (such as milk from left over cereal or runny sauces like gravy).

It is best to ensure that liquid is absorbed by other foods before placing in the liner / caddy. Please do not dispose of drinks in your food waste recycling caddy.

Do not place any packaging in your caddy. Please empty all food items from packaging into the liner / caddy and dispose of the packaging as you normally would.

Once you have registered for the service, we will deliver a kitchen caddy (for your countertop) and an outdoor caddy (for our crews to collect from) to every household, along with a roll of liners to get you started.

We will deliver an annual supply of liners to each household. In the new year ahead of the new food waste collection service we will launch a form to order new liners so please check our website for update on this, but you can also use any suitable bag to line your caddy instead.

When you get near the end of a roll of liners, there will be a tag in the roll. Please attach this tag to the handle of your outdoor caddy and when our crews empty your caddy, they will leave another roll of bags or use our new online form that will go live in the new year.

Alternatively, you can use any other plastic / carrier bag.

Food waste is collected weekly so is emptied more frequently than your household waste bin, therefore maggots, flies and smells are less likely. Always tie your liner bags up, and keep the outdoor caddy lid fully closed, using the handle to lock it, and out of direct sunlight where possible.

Alternatively, you can use any other plastic / carrier bag.

Yes. Crews will come and check for your caddy on your normal collection day. Leave your caddy where you leave your other containers / bins.

Yes. You will receive the same indoor caddy and roll of liners for in your kitchen and your outdoor bin store will have a relevant food waste bin (larger than the caddy for houses as it will service more properties) for you to decant your filled liners into.

Yes, you can. We will be updating our online form for ordering a bin in the new year before collections commence, please check back regularly if you wish to order an additional bin.

Yes, of course. If you already compost your food waste at home in a compost heap or compost bin, you can continue to do so. Not all food can be composted so you can still use the food waste recycling service for foods that can’t be composted, such as all meat, fish, bones and dairy products.

The service accepts biodegradable food waste only. Please try to keep liquids to a minimum (to avoid liner breakage and mess). Your caddy will not be collected if it contains anything other than the items listed above under “what items can go into the caddy?"

Yes, we encourage residents to put house numbers and names on their waste and recycling bins.

Place your caddy in front of your other bins, so we can spot it easily, at your usual collection point.

Please report like any other missed collection by using our online form to report it within 48 hours of it being missed. Please ensure caddies, like all other bins, are ready for collection by 6am on the appointed day.

No. We only collect food waste from the caddies that we provide. If you find you have more than one caddies worth each collection day you will be able to order an additional caddy update our online form for ordering a bin in the new year before collections commence, please check back regularly if you wish to order an additional caddy.

It might be a good idea to understand why so much food waste is being generated, as this can add up to a huge cost for residents.

Could you buy less food? Use leftovers more? If you would like to reduce the amount of food you are wasting, and therefore save you money on your shopping, please visit the love food hate waste website using the link below

Click here to visit the Love Food Hate Waste website

The service is free of charge, and includes free issuing of the indoor caddy, outdoor caddy and liners as well. 

Food waste is recycled through a process called Anaerobic Digestion (AD) to create green energy and fertiliser.

The food waste is sent to a local AD Plant where it is broken down to produce bio gas (a renewable source of energy) that is used to generate electricity and heat and exported to the National Grid.

Recycling food waste also produces bio-fertiliser, called digestate (like a strong compost) that is rich in nutrients required for healthy plant growth and fertile soil. This is used on farms to grow more food.

It helps in lots of ways;

• Reduces environmental and climate change footprint.
• Conserves resources and energy.
• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
• Keeps food out of landfills.
• Produces green energy.
• Creates fertiliser, to grow more food.
• Lowers household food bills wen leading to a reduction in food waste produced. .

Separating food waste for recycling has any benefits, more than just the obvious environmental ones;

• The food waste recycling service is collected weekly, which is more often than the household waste bin (collected fortnightly), so any food waste is not sat in your outdoor bin as long.
• By not using the household waste bin for food waste, you are reducing the huge disposal costs to Stoke-on-Trent City Council, as food waste recycling is a cheaper process. This allows your local council to spend less on rubbish and more on the things that matter to you, such as social care, education, roads and community facilities like leisure centres.
• By recycling your food waste, you can see in the caddy how much food is being wasted in your household, which is costing you money. Highlighting how you are wasting food can change your eating habits so you waste less food, and save you money on your shopping.

Garden waste is composted outside, and it’s illegal to compost food waste which may contain pathogens for diseases (like Foot and Mouth Disease or Swine Fever) outside. To collect food and garden waste together to make compost would make the garden waste subscriptions much more expensive. Garden waste bins are emptied fortnightly, and food waste is best collected weekly.

These are removed at the AD Plant where the food waste is recycled and are burned in a process that makes electricity. Food waste accepting of all types of food, such as raw meat and bones, can only be recycled through Anaerobic Digestion, not composting, due to health and safety issues. As such, even if you used compostable liners in your caddies, they would still need to be removed and burnt.

Learning from other local councils who have been collecting food waste for 15 years, compostable bags were reported by residents to split easily and were messy, which discouraged people from recycling their food waste. The older a compostable liner is, the more likely it is to have begun to degrade, which means the last liners on a roll are weaker and more likely to split.

The AD plant removes the plastic liners, so it doesn’t affect our food recycling process, and the liners are then burnt to make energy. Compostable liners are harder to remove, as they become slimy and sticky during collection.

Compostable liners are only suitable for items that are composted – this food waste recycling process accepts items that can’t be composted, such as raw meat and bones, and is therefore processed via Anaerobic Digestion. ‘Compostable’ means a bag will breakdown during the composting process, not that is biodegradable.

Plastic liners offer a more robust way to utilise the food waste recycling service, as they are stronger (for longer) than compostable liners, so are less likely to break. There is strong evidence to suggest that using liners encourages residents to use the service, and we offer free liners to increase participation in the service. Research has found that compostable liners are 61 – 237% more expensive (depending on the quality, size and brand) than plastic liners. At this additional cost, your council could not afford to provide free liners, which might discourage residents from using the service if you had to pay for your own liners.

The environmental benefits of food waste recycling to produce biogas and fertiliser far outweigh the negative aspects of plastic liners, so we are doing all we can to encourage as much food waste recycling as possible.

The liners are removed from the recycling process and are taken to our disposal facility to make electricity, as they can’t be recycled themselves due to the grade of plastic they are made from.

The plastic liners are removed from the recycling process as the first stage when the food waste arrives at the AD plant. This way, the liners do not compromise the recycling process.

Research has been conducted into the effect of micro-plastics, antibiotics and heavy metals in food waste recycling via Anaerobic Digestion, and has found that there are ways to combat these challenges with mitigation approaches, such as bio-augmentation, thermal hydrolysis pre-treatment, and chemical passivation, which can enhance the breakdown and stabilisation of these contaminants, leaving the products of biogas and fertiliser within the required national safety thresholds of tolerance, and therefore safe to use.

No. If you can’t use the food waste service for some reason, you can still put food waste into your household rubbish bin, but this food waste will not be recycled.

Don’t forget that food waste recycling is collected weekly in the caddy, whereas your household rubbish bin is emptied only fortnightly. We want to make clear what the right way is to get food waste collected, and encourage you to use our food waste recycling service.