Guernsey Press

600 tonnes of food and glass waste from kerbside

ISLANDERS have generated 600 tonnes of food and glass waste over just two months while the amount of general rubbish has fallen sharply, the States’ Trading Supervisory Board has announced.

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Longue Hougue waste plant worker Steve Wright. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 23111824)

The news comes as testing gets under way at the Longue Hougue waste transfer facility, where bales of refuse-derived fuel are being produced.

The amount gathered shows how people have given their enthusiastic support for the new pick-up arrangements, said the STSB.

Almost two-thirds of the total was food waste, accounting for about half of the household kitchen waste produced in the island.

Over the same period, kerbside recycling of other items such as paper and tins and risen by about 30%.

All the recycling has seen black bag waste fall by more than 40%.

Once all the systems at the new facility have been tested, there will be a four-week commissioning phase during which all general and food waste will be processed and exports will begin.

States Trading Assets deputy managing director Richard Evans said that engineers from the various manufacturers of the facility’s different systems will be on site over the coming weeks.

‘Everything has gone very smoothly up to this point, and we estimate that we have another two weeks or so of testing to complete. Then it will quite literally be all systems go,’ he said.

He pointed out that the commissioning phase has not been delayed: ‘At the start of construction, before sticking a spade in the ground, we estimated the earliest we might reach the stage we are at now would be October 2018.

‘That was not a schedule for commissioning or any sort of deadline, it just gave us a date by which we had to ensure all the different materials were being picked up in the right combinations.

‘We are now at the end of the construction period, we are really pleased with how it has all progressed and we are nearly there.’

n Last year, households threw away an estimated 4,200 tonnes of food, more than half of which could probably have been eaten instead of ending up in the bin.

Food waste from Guernsey will in future be exported to the UK and processed separately to general mixed rubbish.

The material will be used to generate electricity and produce compost.