Merton Council is rolling out its food waste collection service to every school in the borough.

Headteacher at Poplar Primary School, Katherine Davies with Councillor Andrew Judge and pupils who are helping to recycle foodwaste at the school

Following a successful bid for funding from the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), all of Merton’s 43 primary and eight secondary schools will be signed up to the council’s food waste collection scheme which already serves over 80,000 households in the borough.

 
Rolling out by the end of 2015, the free service will see every school, whose refuse is collected by the council, provided with food waste bins for kitchen and dining hall areas, caddies to collect fruit waste, wheeled bins that will be placed outside schools and liners for all the food waste bins. Catering and school staff will also be trained to educate the school children about recycling food waste and helping to protect the environment. Each school’s food waste will be collected once a week and used for composting.

 
Poplar Primary School has been successfully trialling the scheme since last year with over 144kg of food waste being collected from the school on a weekly basis.

Cabinet member for environmental sustainability and regeneration, Councillor Andrew Judge, said: “We are very glad that our grant application was accepted – the food waste collection service is something that has worked very well across the borough and I’m delighted that we can get our schoolchildren involved in even more recycling. It was great to visit Poplar Primary School to see how motivated the schoolchildren are to recycle their food waste and protect the environment.”

Poplar Primary School pupil, Molly Henthorn said: “We have an eco council at our school and we make sure that all of our classmates recycle their food properly and help to look after our environment. Sometimes fruit gets mixed up with the normal food bins but we make sure to sort it out and recycle as much as we can!”

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