Founder of Hubbub and Sizzle Trewin Restorick explains why its time to start treating food and green waste as a valuable resource, not a mess to be disposed of.
The government has announced a new independent expert advisory group to offer guidance on how best to create a circular economy.
It will have plenty to explore with electronics, fashion and packaging likely to grab their immediate attention. But maybe they should look at less discussed and grubbier materials to deliver on their ambitions to create green growth, maximise UK resource use, and support the transition to net zero.
This is the view of fifteen organisations – including the Wildlife Trusts, the Royal Horticultural Society, and Nature Friendly Farming Network – who believe that the UK Government should take a fresh look at the way unavoidable food and green waste is treated with a view to reducing reliance on fertilisers, improving soil quality and cutting emissions.
The UK currently treats food and green waste as a mess to be disposed of rather than a valuable resource. In the first instance, we should be looking to waste as little food as possible, but we could do so much more with what is left over.
Over 80% of household food waste is sent to incineration, landfilled, or flushed into sewers. The remaining 20% is composted or used to produce biomethane in anaerobic digestion plants.
The challenge of handling this waste is about to become more pressing with new legislation in place for weekly collections of household food waste and collections from businesses.
This food waste and other natural by-products can provide millions of tonnes of nutrient-rich compost and fertiliser delivering financial and environmental value.
Boosting organic matter in soil will increase production through improved yields, helping UK food security and enhancing soil quality.
Locally produced quality compost will cut dependence on expensive, imported greenhouse gas-emitting chemical fertilisers saving money for farmers, and supporting the green growth agenda. High-quality green waste can be part of the mix to replace the use of peat in growing.
Creating these multiple benefits will require government to take a fresh look at existing policies requiring different departments to take a more systemic view, which will be essential if ambitions to create a circular economy are to be realised.
This systemic approach will require helping farmers gain access to high-quality and affordable compost. It needs to provide financial support and incentives for local authorities and waste companies to reduce contamination levels in food and biowaste.
It should also consider how best to make natural materials available for composting by reviewing the incentives that currently result in materials, like woodchips, being burnt for energy production.
Finally, it must guarantee that anaerobic digestion (AD) plants employ further processing of the end-product digestate (including dewatering) and promote new joint AD and composting plants (which deploy further composting of solid digestate).
This can ensure that these plants deliver the maximum benefits for soil health from organic waste and don’t create unexpected and negative environmental impacts, such as increased levels of river pollution.
These benefits and the associated policy asks have been created by the Enrich the Earth initiative, led by Sizzle Innovation and funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
Enrich the Earth is a movement of diverse organisations seeking to turn waste into nutrient-rich gold.
The partnership has identified that long-term systemic change can only occur if there is a supportive legislative framework.
This realisation is backed by a growing number of organisations who have put their names behind the policy asks. The challenge is how to bring these requests to the attention of a hard-pressed government.
Our work so far has only confirmed that government policy remains almost completely siloed in this space, meaning that the solutions to these problems are not being effectively implemented.
In short, fertilisers are treated as a farming matter, food waste as a collections issue, and anaerobic digestion as an energy issue.
Different teams across different departments are failing to join the dots to deliver a circular economy for biowaste.
Our hope is that the new Circular Economy Taskforce, which will crucially report to a cross-departmental group of Ministers, will add this to their list of considerations and government will realise the multitude of benefits of getting their hands dirty.
We realise that food and green waste are not the most glamorous of topics but as the adage goes “Where there is muck there’s brass”.
If your organisation wishes to be part of the supporting partnership or you want more details, please email hello@enrichtheearth.co.uk.
