Let’s Talk About Food Bins
The Environmental Act 2021 is driving a major shift in how households across England handle their food waste, requiring all local authorities to introduce dedicated collection services by 31 March 2026. To get ready for this change, Newcastle City Council launched a pilot scheme in the city’s West End in September 2024. Insights North East, together with Dr Diogo Monjardino De Souza Monteiro and Dr Patricia Prado from Newcastle University and Dr Stephanie Wilkie from Northumbria University, are partnering with the council to support the pilot’s implementation and evaluation.
As part of the Festival of Social Sciences, the project team hosted a public engagement event to share our findings and get their thoughts on what we are recommending to the council for the city-wide implementation.
Dedicated household food waste collection is important because it enables its reuse and recycling and saves the costs of having to separate food from general waste. However, there are many reasons why residents do not participate in a food waste collection scheme. Therefore, it is critical to understand the drivers and barriers of this behaviour as well as understand what the most effective strategies are to promote behaviour.
The United Nations Climate Change reported that food waste accounts for up to 10% of global greenhouse emissions and costs about 1 trillion dollars a year. In the UK, a recent WRAP report estimates that in 2021-2022, households were responsible for 6 million tonnes of food waste or 58% of total food waste.
While it is imperative to reduce the amount of edible food being wasted, particularly in a time where food insecurity has increased, the reality is that people still bin food that would be suitable for consumption. Also, there are always food scraps (such as vegetable and fruit peels) that need to be discarded. The challenge is to assure that across the food system, waste is reduced and disposed of in the most appropriate way to minimize the amount ending in landfills, where it significantly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Also, in recent years, it became apparent that food waste can be used to produce energy (for instance, in anaerobic digesting plants) as well as other products (for example, compost and biochar) in circular economy models. Thus, effective and efficient collection of food waste can turn a problem into an opportunity to reduce environmental impact and generate value.
For local councils, reducing the amount of general waste, through recycling as well as food waste collection, is not only a legal requirement but also a financial issue. Recent changes in the British regulatory environment aim to assure that the UK is on a trajectory to comply with its commitments to reduce carbon emissions from food waste. The 2024 Spring budget increased UK Landfill tax, which gives councils the incentive to reduce the overall tonnage of waste that goes to landfill. Government is also currently consulting on a near elimination of biodegradable waste disposal in landfill from 2028. Separating food waste from the general waste after bin collection is costly, and having the resident separating food waste in the house and for it to be collected separately and recycled offers significant savings when compared to treating general waste.
To achieve both the environmental and economic benefits, the challenge is to encourage residents to both prevent and reduce the amount of food wasted and separate food from the general waste. Most academic research has focused on the first part of that problem; reducing the amount of food wasted. The new law necessitates a better understanding of how to encourage residents to separate out their food waste in the house and put their bin out for weekly collection.
In September 2024, Newcastle City Council started a pilot to understand the challenges of implementing a citywide food waste collection scheme. They were interested in understanding both the actual levels of participation, as well as residents’ motivations and barriers to participating in food waste collection.
The Insights North East team of academics has helped with both parts of this evaluation. The first part focused understanding the motivations for participating in food waste collection, as well as the viability of developing a geographic information system to help the council monitor participation. This first part was published in this report in May 2025. The second part of the evaluation included a review of the factors influencing food waste collection and a consultation with community groups to better understand their views on the Council’s collection scheme. This second part helped inform a community engagement event at the Festival of Social Sciences in October 2025. At this event, we shared a sneak preview of the findings and actionable insights from the research, sense-checked the findings with participants and even offered a live demonstration of the food waste collection truck.
During the event, participants were asked to rank the barriers, solutions and actionable insights based on what they thought were the most important. We used the online tool Vevox for participants to use their smartphones to answer questions and rank the options.
When asked what the barriers were, the participants in the workshop ranked bin design, lack of knowledge and lack of motivation as the highest- an interesting and diverse mix of barriers. As part of the food waste collection implementation each household will be given two bins, one to keep in the house and one to be put out on bin day for curb side collection. The bin that goes in the house can be replaced with any container that the resident prefers to keep in their kitchen, so there is choice and flexibility in bin design for that.
| 1 | Bin design (size and colour) |
| 2 | Lack of knowledge of the rationale food waste collection |
| 3 | Lack of motivation and apathy |
| 4 | Communication and language barriers |
| 5 | Household dynamics and waste disposal responsibility |
| 6 | Health and hygiene concerns (spread of rubbish in the public space) |
| 7 | Service issues (missing collections) |
| 8 | Distrust of council waste management services |
| 9 | Inclusion and accessibility (specially for flat residents) |
Residents ranked education and community engagement the highest, alongside reminders in various forms as ways to encourage people to engage with the food waste collection. This finding matches with the lack of knowledge being one of the biggest barriers, and demonstrates that it is essential to not just ensure there is a reliable service for collection, but that outreach and engagement is necessary to support residents in this change in waste collection.
| 1 | Education and demonstration on the use of caddies |
| 2 | Community and school engagement, identify and empower promoting food waste champions |
| 3 | Use reminders, such as post-cards, magnets, etc on days of collection |
| 4 | Use multilingual and inclusive communication |
| 5 | Tailor messaging to different audiences and housing conditions |
| 6 | Do more door-to-door and community engagement |
| 7 | Make use of multi-channels of communication (NCC website, apps, local radio adds, etc.) |
When asked what the council specifically should do to increase engagement in food waste collection, the participants ranked engagement and information activities very highly.
| 1 | Increase Newcastle City Council waste management visibility and engagement with the community |
| 2 | Explain in plain terms the food waste journey after collection |
| 3 | Provide clear and timely information on what goes on the bin and when collection occurs |
| 4 | Leverage community networks to support individual household participation |
| 5 | Engage schools and youth organizations |
| 6 | Target communication to different audiences |
| 7 | Involve community is co-production of communication and engagement activities |
| 8 | Combine different communication channels to reach residents |
The polling results emphasised the importance of ensuring that new public services are designed and rolled out alongside resident and community group engagement. What our research has especially demonstrated is that this is even more important when the existing evidence base is limited.
Insights North East will continue to work with the council to support the implementation of the communication and engagement strategy for the rollout of the food waste collection across Newcastle. Both Insights North East, academics from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities and the council are very keen to continue the public engagement with their strategy so, keep an eye out for ways to engage with the council on this, and for the delivery of your food waste bins in the new year!
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