<>

Removing 'smelly' and 'offensive' food waste from bins could justify only picking the rest of the household rubbish up once every three weeks in Birmingham, council bosses have argued.

A major shake-up to the city council's bin collection service looks set to be on the cards following the publication of a waste review conducted by external consultants.

While a host of fundamental improvements have been identified, ranging from replacing the vehicle fleet to rebuilding trust with residents, the most eye-catching proposals concern how often rubbish should be picked up from the city's streets.

There are essentially three main options but crucially all of them feature introducing a weekly collection for food waste, which makes up as much as 40 per cent of Birmingham's rubbish, the council says.

It is expected the government will be making this a mandatory requirement for local authorities by 2023. The first option is to implement the new food service alongside the weekly household waste and fortnightly recycling collections.

The second 'model' would be to bump the 'residual waste', which would basically be the household rubbish left after removing food, to fortnightly, and the third choice would be to shift it to three-weekly.

Consultants Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions UK, are now set to proceed with phase 2 of the review which involves modelling work for the three options to analyse how they could potentially impact - and hopefully improve - recycling rates.

Cllr John O'Shea (Lab, Acocks Green), cabinet member for street scene and parks, vowed that no decision had been made and any significant changes to collection rates in the future would not be introduced without feedback from the public.

He said: "Some councils just take away uncooked food. I think we would go down the path of all food waste, so uncooked and cooked food and meat.

"It has to be disposed of in a different way and it goes to an anaerobic digester. Food waste works because it changes people's behaviour.

"Actually the biggest change is not in the recycling aspect of it, it actually works much higher up the model because we cut back what we choose to throw away.

"Once you see the caddy you're filling up each week with the food waste you are throwing away, you find a way to re-use that or buy a bit less. And the impact on that across the whole food chain is huge.

"We're a city that currently throws away 1,000 tonnes of waste a day, but if we can reduce 300 to 400 tonnes of that through food waste that will be a huge change."

He added: "The actual smelly stuff you get rid of each week, I think if that wasn't there what is left in your bin? Bits of plastic, stuff that has been in contact with food we can't recycle.

"It would change the content of that residual waste bin massively and the offensive waste that's going to smell is the organic, food waste."

Cllr O'Shea stated it was too early to suggest what sort of containers would be used for the food waste and also pointed out that the council would likely get extra funding to introduce the service.

Darren Share, assistant director for street scene, said: "We've been speaking to other authorities across the UK where they have introduced food waste.

"That caddy starts off being full, then as people see what they are throwing away they change their culture and their behaviour and that gets less and less and less and in some cases some authorities have then stopped offering food waste as a service."