Food Waste Collection Service
Since February 2018, the Council has been collecting food waste from properties in the South of the borough, with around 2,000 households in Chelsea participating and recycling their unwanted food waste. The Council is now able to offer the service to around 2,000 homes in the North of the borough.
If you are one of the households involved in the new service, you will already have been sent a letter, and the items below to help you recycle your food waste:
- A small, black kitchen caddy (7 litre) – for use inside the home
- A larger, black caddy with a lockable lid (23 litre) – for use outside the home
- 12 months' supply of special liners for the kitchen caddy
- A detailed service information leaflet
Using the food waste collection service
- Keep the small caddy in your home (probably in the kitchen) and the larger caddy outside the front of your property
- Line your indoor caddy with one of the special liners provided by us
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When your indoor caddy is nearly full, tie the top of the liner and place it in your outside caddy (which comes with a lockable lid) ready for collection.
The external caddies are robust and lockable, unlike plastic bags, which means rodents and vermin won’t be able get to your food waste, keeping our streets cleaner.
Collection day
Food waste will be collected from the outdoor caddy once a week:
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If you live in the South of the borough your food waste will be collected on your first rubbish and recycling collection day of the week, either on Monday or Tuesday
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If you live in the North of the borough, your food waste will be collected on your second rubbish and recycling collection day of the week, either on Thursday or Friday.
Visit our rubbish collections webpage to check your rubbish and recycling collection days.
Please remember to place your caddy at the front of your property ready for collection by 7am on your collection day. The caddy should be at kerbside level (not in a basement), and not on the pavement or public highway. The caddy needs to be easily seen by the collection crew.
Correct way to present your caddy on your collection day
Yes please:
No thanks:
What can and can’t go in your food waste caddy
Yes please:
- Leftover raw and cooked food
- Cooked and raw vegetables
- Fruit and peelings
- Out of date food, and left overs
- Dairy including cheese and eggs
- Bread and pastries
- Raw and cooked meat
- Fish and bones
- Tea bags and coffee grounds
- Egg shells
- Rice, pasta and beans.
No thanks:
- Packaging of any kind
- Plastic bags
- Garden waste
- Liquids such as milk
- Oil or liquid fat
- Any material that is not food waste.
Missed collection
To report a missed food waste collection, please contact Streetline telephone 020 7361 3001 or email [email protected]. Your food waste will be collected within 24 hours.
How to order extra or replacement caddies
If you would like to order another kitchen caddy or outdoor caddy, please contact Streetline on 020 7361 3001 or email [email protected].
Run out of special liners?
If you run out of the special liners and need some more, contact Streetline on 020 7361 3001 or email [email protected]. Please note Streetline is open from Monday to Friday between 8.30am and 5.30pm. There is no service over the weekend or bank holidays.
Why we are offering a separate food waste collection service
We are introducing this new service because we want to increase recycling rates and send less of our food waste for incineration. If you are one of the properties being offered the service, there are some great reasons why you should give it a go:
- The food waste collected will be taken to an anaerobic digestion plant in north London, where it will be used to generate power for homes and organic fertilizer for use by farmers
- The processing plant is incredibly efficient at generating electricity from your food waste.Even small amounts can make a huge difference to the environment
- Six recycled tea bags could produce enough electricity to boil a kettle for another cuppa
- Just one caddy-load of food waste generates enough electricity to power a light bulb for more than 24 hours
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Food waste makes up roughly a third of general waste, which has very high disposal costs.
Please read the frequently asked questions and answers (FAQs) below for more information about the service:
Why isn’t my property being offered the new service?
Unfortunately, at present, we are unable to offer the new food waste recycling service to all properties in the borough. We are only able to introduce this new service to properties which have both sufficient external space at the front to store the food waste caddy and are not shared (e.g. flats). This helps keep the area clean and the service running smoothly.
We hope to be able to introduce the service to every property in the borough sometime in the future. But for the time being, if you want to dispose of your food waste please continue to treat it as non-recyclable rubbish.
Please visit the Love Food Hate Waste website for tips on how to reduce your food waste.