Managing Biowastes from Households in the UK

Managing Biowastes from Households in the UK: Applying Life-cycle Thinking in the Framework of Cost-benefit Analysis - A Final Report for WRAP, was published by WRAP in May 2007.

It looks at the options for managing kitchen and garden waste from households in the UK, based on environmental and economic analysis. The report, written by consultants Eunomia, concludes that a sound management strategy for household biowaste is likely to include:

• intensive promotion of home composting as a means of diverting appropriate biowastes from landfill at the lowest cost
• where kerbside garden waste collection services are provided they should be designed so as minimise the potential for attracting additional waste into the collection system. A number of measure are available to local authorities
• separate collection of food wastes using efficient and lower-cost approaches so as to allow weekly collections at acceptable cost
• provision of containers (kitchen caddies and kerbside containers) to make the separation of food waste easy for residents and to encourage them to take part in the service
• close consideration to matching the method of collection to the treatment system being operated. AD and in-vessel composting could both be valuable with AD bringing the higher environmental benefits.