Food & Biodegradable Waste

The European Union (Household Food Waste and Bio-Waste) Regulations, 2015 impose obligations on householders living in specified areas to:

• segregate household food waste (the brown bin) and keep it separate from other non-biodegradable waste, and have it separately collected by an authorised waste collector, and
• prohibit the disposal of such food waste into the residual waste collection (the black bin).

Householders may alternatively:

• Compost the food waste at home, or
• Bring the food waste to authorised treatment centres for recovery in an environmentally acceptable way, such as civic amenity sites, or anaerobic digestion sites.

Further information on using your brown bin and avoiding food waste is available from;

• www.brownbin.ie
• www.stopfoodwaste.ie

These regulations also impose obligations on Waste Collectors to:

• provide a separate collection service for food waste from households in agglomerations of greater than 500 people
• include in its separate food waste collection service an approved “brown bin” type reusable waste receptacle to the address of each household customer
• collect same at least once a fortnight, or more frequently where necessary, and
• transfer the food waste collected to an authorised facility for the purposes of an authorised treatment process.

If you live in one of the areas mentioned below and your waste collector does not offer a brown bin, please report this to the Council’s Environment section, by email to contact@waterfordcouncil.ie or by phone 0818 10 20 20.

It is an offence to place food waste arising as part of household waste in your residual (black) bin.