With Halloween (31 October) fast approaching local people are being asked to avoid giving their green bin a scare by minimising food waste as they celebrate.
Bonfire Night (5 November) and Diwali (7 November) are also coming up and many people will be looking forward to parties, festivities and plenty of delicious food at this time.
An estimated 10 million pumpkins are grown in the UK every year with 95% of these carved into hollowed-out lanterns for Halloween. Sadly, only the remaining 5% will be used for cooking.
Rather than throwing away the contents of your lantern, why not turn them into a delicious soup, stew or pie?
Any pumpkin scrapings or carvings that you don’t manage to turn into a tasty seasonal dish can be chopped up and recycled via your green food waste bin. Alternatively you could compost them at home.
Recycling as much of your culinary leftovers as possible via your green bin helps minimise the amount of food waste that ends up in landfill alongside non-recyclable household rubbish.
Food recycling collected by the council is taken to a special processing plant – where it is broken down and gets converted into electricity that gets pushed into the national grid to heat and light homes. What is left is used as fertiliser for farms. None of it goes to waste.
Mixed recycling is sorted after collection meaning it’s never been easier to recycle in Ealing. You can use blue bins to recycle cardboard, plastic bottles, metal tins and foil, glass jars and some food and drink cartons. Containers and bottles will need to be washed to remove any food residue.
Councillor Mik Sabiers, cabinet member for environment and highways said: “Ealing is outperforming every other London borough bar one for recycling rates at more than 50% of the total amount. We remain committed to improving these rates even further and are aiming to reach 60% recycling by 2022.
“We want to maintain these incredibly high standards and improve even more where we can, which is why we are encouraging residents to recycle as much food and packaging as possible as they enjoy the numerous celebrations this autumn.”
Find out tips about saving on your food scraps courtesy of Love Food Hate Waste.
There are also plenty of tips to help you get the most out of your blue and green bins via our Recycling Week 2018 roundup.
