Essex County Council: Increasing Household Food Waste Participation

A waste composition analysis by Essex County Council revealed that a quarter of the general waste thrown away at kerbside was food.

Although free, weekly food recycling collections were in place for most households in Essex, more had to be done to increase resident participation and the ‘Food Recycling Project’ in March 2023-24 did just that. This resulted in a 21% increase in food recycling tonnage collected* and an estimated reduction of over 90% CO2e emissions based on shifting food waste from disposal at landfill to energy recovery at an anaerobic digestion facility.

Problem

The key focus was to reduce general waste, increase recycling, and move waste up the waste hierarchy in support of the Waste Strategy for Essex and the council’s strategic goals.

Although free, weekly food recycling collections were already offered to most households in Essex, there had been limited recent campaigning to promote participation. Therefore, maximising food recycling was a priority for ECC to deliver both environmental and financial benefits.

Securing investment in food recycling

To secure investment for the ‘Food Recycling Project’, Essex County Council designed a county-wide approach using WRAP’s best practice methodology, local research, and case studies from UK local authorities to provide robust justification for this large-scale project. The council also carried out a pilot study in one area of Essex to test materials and methodology within an Essex setting.

Solution

ECC secured funding to deliver a year-long ‘Food Recycling Project’ from March 2023 to March 2024 to engage residents to recycle their food by providing them with tools and support.

Goals and measures of the project were:

• To deliver a food recycling package made up of a bin sticker for the general waste bin, a free roll of liners, and an information leaflet to 375,000 eligible households (eligible households consisted of houses with a food recycling service and a wheeled general waste bin).
• To support the roll-out with county-wide, and area-specific communications.
• To work in partnership with the nine Essex Waste Collection Authorities (WCAs).
• To achieve a 10% increase in food tonnage recycled at kerbside.
• To save £206,000 from avoided disposal.

Key deliverables included:

• Increasing resident trust and action by focussing communications on the food recycling journey in Essex and the power of making small changes with everyday food items. For example, recycling just six teabags can generate enough power to boil your kettle for another cup of tea.
• Utilising COM-B and EAST behaviour change models to focus on reaching target audiences, addressing barriers, and educating on the environmental and cost benefits of food recycling. The tools and know-how were provided to residents to make the desired behaviour change easy and sustained.
• Using both tried and tested avenues and innovative routes to increase exposure to messaging, including a vox pop with BBC Radio Essex.
• Creating an animated YouTube series that aired on ITVX and Sky, as well as social media platforms. The series originated from social listening relating to why residents didn’t recycle their food with the aim that the tongue-in-cheek, informal content would provide residents with information to overcome common misconceptions. Trialling these new avenues provided valuable insight for future projects and campaigns.

Impact

The ‘Food Recycling Project’ by ECC far exceeded targets, delivering extensive scale and ambition to increase participation in their long-standing food recycling services.  

The impact so far includes:

• 375,108 households across the nine eligible areas received the food recycling package.
• Food recycling tonnage data shows an average increase of 21% when comparing first three-month post-delivery with previous year*. This is more than double the target set.  
• An estimated reduction in CO2e emissions of over 90% based on shifting food from disposal at landfill to recovery at an anaerobic digestion facility.
• Increased caddy requests from residents and operational feedback observing increased food recycling volumes and participation.
• Over 5.6 million impressions across Meta, YouTube, and Google.
• An animated Rubbish Rumours series with over 610,000 plays on YouTube.
• An un-skippable ad on ITVX and Sky with over 281,000 impressions.
• A post-roll-out resident feedback survey found that when residents received the items it boosted their knowledge and encouraged them to recycle their food.

Feedback

The project brought food recycling to the forefront of resident’s minds, inspiring passionate discussions across various platforms. Some of the feedback ECC received has been included below:  

I'm glad they're encouraging food to be disposed of separately.

Essex resident via social media

My street received the food recycling intervention last Thursday - this week, there is a noticeable increase in households with food caddies presented.

WCA officer

Engaging key stakeholders

For such a wide-reaching project, a ‘whole council’ approach was adopted, with briefings and resources provided to elected Members, communications, customer service teams, and waste officers to promote the project and secure support.

WRAP’s involvement

The best practice guidance and case studies provided by WRAP supplied a solid foundation from which ECC tested materials and designed project logistics. This included the decision to provide the free, one-off roll of compostable liners to residents, as well as helping the council decide which households would be eligible and in scope for this specific project.

From the impact figures reported by WRAP, ECC also made sure to prioritise the delivery of the food recycling package around stickering the wheeled general waste bins. If the weather was not suitable for stickering wheeled general waste bins, the deliveries were paused until conditions were favourable.

Next steps  

ECC continues to work to support the WCAs in improving and promoting the food recycling service available throughout Essex via ongoing promotional work regarding food recycling and service provision.

The council is eager to maintain the momentum of this project and continue investing in food recycling by:

• Continuing to assess the tonnage data to provide both short and long-term impacts. This will inform ECC what further interventions are required and when.
• Carrying out a participation study to see how the project has shifted resident action.
• Investing in another food project targeting an additional 130,000 households without wheeled general waste bins.

^{* When compared to a control group} 

For more information and support on household food collections, email us on [email protected] for expert advice from our local authority team.