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Food waste pilot postponed
6:42am Friday 18th July 2008
Sir - Your article on recycling and rubbish collections (July 11) left out a key fact on Oxford's system.
The Liberal Democrat administration which ran the city until April 2008 was very keen to introduce weekly food waste collections as soon as possible, and had obtained funds to run a pilot scheme this summer.
Food waste dumped in landfill sites gives rise to highly damaging methane gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. Most objections received from the public were around having to store food waste for two weeks, especially in the summer months. Food waste needs a special treatment plant and the county council had promised to have a facility ready for April 2009. This now looks doubtful due to procurement delays, but interim measures are promised for those authorities which are collecting the food waste. The city had found a suitable outlet for the pilot scheme in a neighbouring county - and all would have been ready to roll by June.
Astonishingly the new Labour administration has dropped the pilot scheme - so no one in the city will benefit this year and the lessons that could have been learnt on how best to implement a citywide scheme will not be available. Even just a pilot scheme would have boosted Oxford's already soaring recycling rate - which reached 42 per cent in May, the highest ever!
As your editorial said, a weekly food waste collection is key to getting widespread public acceptance of alternate weekly collections of general refuse, even though Cherwell managed without this feature for several years.
Labour in Oxford are certainly not listening to the public.
Jean Fooks, Liberal Democrat councillor for Summertown
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