THIS is Recycle Week – the annual awareness raising campaign- set to run from Monday to Sunday, and Fife Council is launching a new video to help people to recycle as well as possible.

The new short video takes people on a journey to show what happens to food and garden waste, and how this is processed.

It also reveals why only garden and food waste should go into the kerbside brown bin. To access the video visit https://youtu.be/OZYyyAJ2S_I

Zero Waste Scotland is focusing on food waste during Recycle Week this year because Scottish households throw away 600,000 tonnes of food waste every year.

Have you ever wondered where your garden and food recycling goes?

Food caddies are provided by Fife Council and the waste from these goes, along with garden waste, into the brown bin, which is collected and transported to a local anaerobic digestion (AD) facility, in Dunfermline.

When food waste is recycled properly, it can become a valuable resource. The AD facility converts food and garden waste into electricity for the national grid, with the heat generated from this process used in local buildings.

Anaerobic digestion is a biological process that happens naturally when bacteria break down organic material in a closed oxygen free environment. The process produces methane-rich biogas. The methane is captured and used as fuel to generate renewable electricity and heat.

Once energy and heat are produced the material is composted into soil conditioner that is collected and used by Fife farmers, reducing the need to dispose of food waste in landfill sites.

What food waste can be recycled?

All food waste, cooked and uncooked, can be recycled in the brown bin. This includes all unavoidable food waste - potato peelings, tea bags, banana skins, bones, egg shells and coffee grounds.

However, people should not put any non-compostable waste into their brown bin, such as glass, plastic plant pots, plastic bags or food that is still in plastic containers, or that has residual bits of cling film or foil attached.

A little effort goes a long way. Fife Council is asking residents to put food and green garden waste only in the brown bin. Although some of the wrong material is manually removed at the AD facility, contamination can lead to the compost being regarded as a waste rather than a resource resulting in disposal costs, as farmers can’t use it.

Cllr Ross Vettraino, convener of the Council’s Environment, Protective Services and Community Safety Committee, said: “The council will do all that it can to support people to reduce waste of every kind and to recycle waste that cannot be avoided.

"By choosing to recycle food waste, people can convert it from being something, which is extremely harmful to the environment, to green electricity, which does not harm the environment and that can be fed into the national grid, as well as producing good quality fertiliser that will help crops to grow. Recycling food waste is a really good and easy way for Fifers to help the local economy and to make a local contribution towards easing a global problem.”