A thriving sustainable Cornwall and a great environment for all
Weekly food waste, fortnightly recycling and fortnightly rubbish collections limited to what fits in your 180 litre bin or sack will encourage us all to waste less and recycle more.
The changes will cut Cornwall's annual carbon emissions by nearly 18,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. That’s a saving of about the amount of CO2 that a car would kick out driving round the world 2,547 times.
And it will give one and all of us a way to contribute direct from home to the creation of a thriving, sustainable Cornwall that offers a great environment for all.
Read more about our mission to create a thriving, sustainable CornwallRead about our plans to tackle climate change
Waste less and recycle more
Recycling is vital if we’re to tackle climate change and is something we can all do relatively easily from home.
This is one reason why the government has introduced new legislation that requires councils to provide householders with a food waste recycling service.
Our current collection service allows householders to put out as much rubbish as they want every week. That doesn’t encourage people to waste less and recycle more.
In fact currently, when it comes to Cornwall's household rubbish and the average black bag:
- 22% could and should have been recycled using the current service
- a shocking 35% is food waste that should have been eaten but will be recyclable using the new service
- only 43% is real rubbish that genuinely couldn't have been reused or recycled
Changing to a fortnightly rubbish collection with a 180 litre limit on the amount we’ll collect will ensure we all recycle.
The new services also bring us up to date with the rest of the UK.
Out of 32 councils in the South West, only Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly still collect an unlimited volume of rubbish from householders every week.
Collecting your food waste from you each week separately from your rubbish will allow us to recycle it at an anaerobic digestion plant into farm fertiliser that will grow more food, and energy to power communities.
This is good news. It means we’ll be able to recycle about a third more of Cornwall's average kitchen bin, helping us all to reduce waste and carbon emissions, and tackle climate change.
Find out what happens to your recycling once we collect it
Food waste
You’ll be able to recycle all sorts of food including tea bags, egg shells, bones,
plate scrapings, veg peelings and more. We’ll collect it weekly to recycle into
farm fertiliser that will grow more food, and energy to power communities.
Most households will find that separating their food waste for weekly collection will reduce their rubbish significantly.
That means that once the new food waste service is running, we'll start collecting your rubbish fortnightly, like your recycling, rather than weekly as we do at the moment.
This will be better for the environment and bring Cornwall’s rubbish collections in line with most of the rest of the UK, where councils have already changed to fortnightly collections.
We will collect more rubbish from some households under certain exceptional circumstances. You will be able to apply to us to review your fortnightly rubbish limit once your new bins have been delivered
