Food waste increases dramatically over the Christmas period and this year Oxfordshire County Council is calling for residents to help reduce the festive food waste mountain.

Wallingford is home to Green Power, the first local authority anaerobic digester plant in the UK, which has been running for nine years.

The anaerobic digester turns the sludge of food waste into gas to make energy and fertiliser.

Oxford Mail:

It processes around 400 tons of food waste every year and at Christmas all the extra mince pies and sprouts means that figure increases.

Rachel Burns, waste strategy manager at Oxfordshire County Council, said: “Each household around the county produces around 64kg of food waste each Christmas, which amounts to a total across the country of 1,952 extra tons of food waste.”

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To tackle the issue of the Christmas food waste mountain, the council is calling for the residents of Oxfordshire to buy carefully, freeze unused food and also to put the leftover turkey bones and sprouts into the food waste bins.

Oxford Mail:

Putting the food waste in the correct bin has huge environmental benefits, as the tanks capture 4.5 million cubic metres of methane a year, which has the same greenhouse gas impact as taking 70,000 cars off the road.

Rachel Burns, said: “Before the festive season gets going, we are asking people to consider if they might be over-ordering.”

She continued: “The average household throws away around £70 a month of food, and more over Christmas; this equates to 74 million mince pies or five million Christmas puddings across the country.

"Each household in Oxfordshire throws away the equivalent weight of 1,100 mince pies in waste food over the season.”

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The thrown-away peelings, unwanted sprouts and turkey bones are chucked in the food waste bin and then taken to the Wallingford anaerobic digester which captures the methane produced from the rotting food.

The process starts with the food getting ripped out of the food waste bags and pulverised using a machine called a hammer mill which is then pumped into the digester.

Oxford Mail:

Pamela Lloyd, commercial director at Green Power, explained the process: “We have five digestion tankers on site, they are holding about 4.5 thousand tonnes of food waste and they are acting just like our stomachs, they break it down to give us energy.”

She said: “We feed them six times a day and the bacteria starts breaking down the food and giving off gas, that gas is a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapour. We catch it in our roofs and they are mixed together, so we’re mixing the gas that’s generated off each tank.”

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She continued: “The gas then turns a generator to create electricity which goes off to the national grid and this plant is producing enough power for 4,800 homes 24/7.”