It’s important to recycle your food and garden waste if you can. We collect your food and garden waste from the green top bins and it is then sent to an in-vessel composting (IVC) facility in Dagenham, where it's turned into agricultural fertiliser and soil improver. That means your vegetable peelings and gardens cuttings will eventually be turned into something that could help grow more food! 

It is also cheaper for the council to turn food waste into compost than it is to incinerate it. By recycling your food waste, you are helping to protect the environment and save public money. 

Food waste

Food waste refers to all cooked and uncooked food, including:

• fruit and vegetables
• meat, fish and bone
• plate scrapings
• rice, pasta and bread
• tea bags and coffee grounds.

Garden waste

Garden waste includes:

• grass, hedge and shrub cuttings
• leaves and weeds
• plants and flowers
• straw, hay and sawdust
• tree bark and small branches (less than 50mm or two inches in diameter)
• vegetarian pet waste (for example, from rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters)

Not in the green bin

Please don't put plastic bin liners, plastic sacks, carrier bags or degradable/biodegradable sacks in your green-top bin as they don't break down quickly enough.

Please keep the amount of soil you put into the green-top bin to a minimum. If you have a lot of soil to dispose of you can load it into small rubble sacks and we can collect it as part of our bulky waste collection service.

Compostable packaging

There is now more packaging which claims to be compostable, such as certain coffee cups and bioplastic. Unfortunately, we cannot accept these items along with your food and garden waste, so please do not put these in your green top bin. It very difficult for our crew to identify these items as compostable as they look identical to other types of packaging and we cannot guarantee that it is made from a material that we are able to recycle.

Using your kitchen caddy

Residents can request a six-litre kitchen caddy to store food waste in until there is enough to put into the bins or sacks for collection.

Corn starch and paper liners and sacks are suitable for holding your food and garden waste - please don't use plastic bags.

Make sure that the sacks you use carry the 'compostable' sign.

Buy caddy sacks

Home composting equipment

We work with a company called Straight PLC to provide composting bins and equipment to residents.

Buy home composting equipment (Get Composting website)

Reduce food waste

We support the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, which encourages people to shop, cook and store food wisely.

Learn how to reduce food waste (Love Food Hate Waste website)