Schools in Merton have kicked off the new term with a free food waste collection and education scheme.

Councillor Andrew Judge with Headteacher at Links Primary School Susan Taylor and pupils taking part in the free food waste scheme

Following a successful bid for funding from the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) last year, Merton Council’s free food waste recycling scheme, which already serves over 80,000 households in the borough, is now being rolled out to Merton’s primary and secondary schools. After rolling out to 20 schools last year, the scheme has been introduced to a further seven schools this month.

With more schools signing up over the next year, 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 successfully started trialing the scheme last year with an average of over 144kg of food waste being collected from the school on a weekly basis.  The food waste includes chicken and fish bones, vegetable and fruit peelings and egg shells, plus other leftovers.

Cabinet member for environmental sustainability and regeneration, Councillor Andrew Judge, said: “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 who successfully trialed the scheme and Links Primary School, who’ve just signed up, to see how motivated the schoolchildren are to recycle their food waste and protect the environment.”

ENDS