Delays to the rollout of new food waste bins for homes across Herefordshire and Worcestershire are leaving councils “behind the curve”, a Green councillor says.
By law, local authorities across England are required to have a weekly food waste collection service in place by April 2026. The government has argued the move will reduce discarded food.
However, complications with existing waste contracts and uncertainty over government funding mean no council in the two counties can currently commit to introducing the service on time.
Wychavon District Council has become the latest council to write to ministers to say it will not meet the deadline. Instead, it says collections will start from April 2028.
“I’m very frustrated about the wave of delays,” said Tor Pingree, a Green city councillor in Worcester.
“At the moment all of our food waste… goes to the incinerator, it takes a lot of fuel to burn.”
“Honestly, it’s surprising to me that we haven’t been collecting our food waste for a long time, many councils across the country are already doing it… we’re behind the curve on this one,” she said.
At present, all councils in Herefordshire and Worcestershire collect black waste bins and green recycling bins on alternate weeks.
New food waste collections – with new bins or caddies – would run alongside this, taking material to an anaerobic digester to be turned into biogas.
“Food waste currently goes in your black bin… it amounts to 35% of that black bin,” said Conservative councillor Emma Stokes, a district councillor in Wychavon.
“The idea is that by separating out, households will think more about what they’re actually throwing away,” she added.
Yet, as Wychavon’s executive board member for resources, Councillor Stokes said she had decided to delay the district’s food waste collection service until April 2028.
She said the move represented value for money for the taxpayer, and would prevent the council from breaching its current refuse collection contract.
“We’ve just asked the government to bear with us for two years to keep the contract in place,” Stokes said.
“We haven’t heard back from them.”
Because of the government’s reorganisation of local government, all of Worcestershire’s districts are due to be abolished on 1 April 2028.
Stokes said she did not also want to tie in any successor local authority to a long-term waste contract.