Separating food waste - workshops on your doorstep

The second year of the National Food Waste Recycling Week awareness campaign, which will run from 5th until 11th June, will provide practical advice, with easy to follow hints and tips to encourage everyone to recycle more of their food waste.

This year, the aim is to ensure that people understand that food waste needs to be fully separated from all packaging such as plastic or other containers to prevent contamination at the compost and anaerobic digestion facilities leading to higher quality recycling. The campaign is being supported by Cork County Council and managed by MyWaste.ie

MALLOW & FERMOY EVENTS

Cork County Council will be hosting a number of events where attendees will receive a food waste caddy, each with a starter pack of caddy liners as well as free compost for their gardens (pending availability) together with an information leaflet on how to recycle food waste at home.

Local dates and venues are as follows: 6th June (10.30am to 12pm) in Mallow Library – Aoife Munn will be hosting a talk titled ‘Reduce your Food Waste with Aoife Munn and Composting Made Easy’. While on the same day at 2.30pm in Fermoy Library, Aoife will be hosting a talk ‘Growing Food from Seed’.

DIVERTING FROM LANDFILL

In Ireland, we waste about 800,000 tonnes of food each year, according to current best estimates. Growing, processing and transporting food uses a huge amount of resources, such as land, water, energy and fertiliser. If food is wasted, these resources are wasted too. The EPA estimates that food waste costs the average Irish household about €60 per month or €700 per year. That’s an annual national cost of €1.29 billion.

The overall aim of the campaign is to generate awareness of the role of food waste recycling in diverting this valuable resource from landfill and allowing it to be transformed into renewable energy and fertilisers for horticulture and agriculture use in Ireland. This will have a lasting impact as it will create green jobs here now and into the future. Properly recycled food waste can be used to produce energy through anaerobic digestion and to produce clean, organic fertiliser.

For more information on the National Food Waste Recycling Week 2023 and to check local events, see www. mywaste.ie/nationalfood-waste-recyclingweek/