THE amount of households recycling food waste in bins has increased by 30 per cent since this time last year.

Last September the Forest of Dean District Council and Gloucestershire’s Joint Waste team launched a project whereby all black refuse bins received a yellow sticker advising residents not to landfill their leftovers, but rather put it in caddies they provided.

Since then food waste recycling has increased by 30 per cent based on the same quarter figures from 2014/15.

Councillor Marrilyn Smart, Cabinet Member for the Environment at the Forest of Dean District Council, said: “Recycling food waste not only reduces disposal costs but means this resource can be used to produce a biogas which can be fed back to the grid thereby reducing energy production. 

“Even the leftover ‘digestate’ is used, applied as a fertiliser to farmland, giving vital nutrients back to the ground.”