A weekly food waste collection trial is being launched in five areas of the borough – bringing food waste collections to Slough for the first time.
The trial will start from Monday 1 July in five areas:
- Parts of Britwell
- Parts of Chalvey
- Parts of Langley
- Diamond Road Estate
- Colnbrook
Every home in the trial areas who currently have red and grey bins will receive two caddies – a small one for inside and a larger one for outside – which they can use for all types of food waste.
Postcards are going out this week to all trial areas explaining what will happen and this will be followed up by the delivery of the caddies and another postcard from the middle of June.
The postcards feature a cartoon character, Kit the caddy, who loves the taste of food waste, to encourage whole families to get involved in using the new service.
Collections of the food caddies will be weekly on the same day as normal collections from 1 July.
It is hoped if the trial is successful the scheme will be rolled out across the borough.
Councillor Gurcharan Singh Manku, lead member for environmental services, said: “Currently around 40 per cent or more of what goes in a normal refuse bin is food waste.
“Kit the caddy loves every morsel of food whether it is banana skins, vegetable peelings, leftovers of any kind, meat, fish and even bones, coffee grounds, tea bags and eggshells. As long as it is food it can go in the caddy.
“In fact, the only things that can’t go in is non-food waste like packaging, pet waste and garden waste.
“And residents don’t need to be worried about smells because the indoor caddy can be lined with a bin bag and emptied in the outdoor bin still in the bag!”
He added: “Since the normal bin collections went to alternate weeks, residents have been clamouring for weekly food waste collections; to not only cut down on the amount of waste that goes into their grey bins but also issues with smells, maggots and other pests particularly in hot weather.
“With this trial, we will be able to see just how a food waste collection could work across the whole borough.”
For more information including the list of all the roads included in the trial areas see www.slough.gov.uk/foodwaste