Ban food waste from landfill for renewable energy, warns thinktank

The Guardian

Press Association

The government should ban all food leftovers from landfill by the end of the decade to boost technology which can turn it into energy, a study from thinktank CentreForum suggested on Tuesday.

Councils should be given financial support to help them bring in separate food waste collections for households and businesses to ensure a steady supply of organic waste for anaerobic digestion, a renewable power source.

The process could create enough biogas from green waste and purpose-grown crops to power more than 2.5m UK homes by 2020, the report said.

But barriers to increasing energy from anaerobic digestion need to be removed if the technology is to be scaled up significantly from current levels where it produces enough energy to power 300,000 homes, the report found.

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