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£200 worth of rewards up for grabs every week for recycling your food in the West of England

This news article was published more than a year ago. Some of the information may no longer be accurate.

Published: 08/07/2015


If you live in South Gloucestershire, Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol or North Somerset and you recycle your food, you could be rewarded with a £50 voucher to spend with a retailer of your choice.

Every week from 29 June to 18 March, one resident from each of the four West of England unitary authority areas will be rewarded with a £50 voucher just for recycling their food.

To take part, all you need to do is put your food out for recycling regularly.  Make sure that you label it clearly with your address and put it out by 7am on your collection day and you may be randomly selected to win a reward.  The more times you put it out, the more chances you have to win.

The project has been funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government’s £5million Recycling Reward Scheme, following a successful bid by Bath & North East Somerset Council.

Cllr Martin Veal (Conservative, Bathavon North), Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet Member for Community Services, said: “Leading the four local unitaries in securing extra Government funding both fulfils our recycling pledges and secures an extra funding reward for the West of England partnership. In 2014-15 we recycled nearly half our rubbish in Bath and North East Somerset, an excellent effort, but our new administration believes we can do even better than that.

“Food recycling is particularly important because it can be turned into electricity, heat and fertiliser using the process of anaerobic digestion giving us cleaner, greener and healthier communities.  It costs councils less to recycle and it’s always better than throwing food into landfill sites further contributing to climate change.”

To start recycling your food, contact your local Council who will supply you with a caddy to store food in your kitchen and a larger lockable bin to put the food out for collection.  You can put out any uneaten food including meat and fish, bones, bread and cakes, teabags, vegetable peelings and food that has gone past its ‘use buy’ date (please remove any packaging first).

Cllr Heather Goddard, Chair of South Gloucestershire Council’s Communities Committee, said: “The Feed Me and Win campaign is a great opportunity to promote awareness of the food recycling service and will encourage residents to make the most of the services available to them. In South Gloucestershire 23 per cent of waste in the average household black bin is food waste and therefore is a priority for us to make sure this is diverted into recycling collections. This is better for the environment and will help us to reach our recycling target of 50 per cent by 2020.”

Cllr Peter Bryant, North Somerset Council’s executive member whose portfolio includes recycling, said: “North Somerset Council has the best recycling rate of 60% in the country when compared with all unitary authorities (apart from Rutland with a population of only 38,000!)  We want to improve that rate by staying ahead of the game and therefore we are delighted with the latest scheme to encourage those who have been reluctant to participate in recycling to join the rest of us and achieve an even higher percentage.

Councillor Daniella Radice, Bristol’s Assistant Mayor for Neighbourhoods with responsibility for recycling, said: “I am delighted that Bristol is taking part in this reward scheme, as it offers people an incentive to change their habits and help protect the environment.

“Our waste strategy means reducing the waste we all produce. A key part of this is ensuring that as much food waste as possible is separated out and goes for composting.

“It is time to change our relationship with waste, and there is no better time to do this than during our year as European Green Capital.”

For more information, please visit www.feedmeandwin.co.uk


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