Folkestone & Hythe Has Weekly Food Waste Collections. The Real Problem Is Getting Residents to Use Them

The service is here. The caddies are here. The council says the food waste is turned into renewable energy. The real local question is whether enough people are actually using the system properly.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council already runs a weekly household food waste collection. The waste is collected on the same day as the rest of the waste and sent for anaerobic digestion to produce renewable energy. So, in this district, the issue is not whether the service exists. It does. The issue is whether residents are making proper use of it.

That is where the local picture becomes more awkward. The council’s own published material says weekly food collections cover 95 per cent of properties and more than 53,000 properties each week. On paper, that is a substantial service. But paper is one thing and household habit is another. A service can be available, well-publicised and easy enough to understand, and still be underused.

When the official DEFRA data is laid out over time, this is exactly what Folkestone & Hythe appears to be wrestling with. Using Defra’s WasteDataFlow annual returns, food waste collected in the district stood at about 4,258 tonnes in 2020/21. It then dropped to around 3,097 tonnes in 2021/22, 2,769 tonnes in 2022/23 and 2,601 tonnes in 2023/24, before recovering to about 2,792 tonnes in 2024/25. That latest rise is welcome. But it is still only a partial recovery after a long slide. The council has the service, but residents have not been using it as much as they could.

Look at the same story on a per-household basis and it becomes even clearer. The district went from about 82.8 kilograms of collected food waste per household in 2020/21 to about 49.3 kilograms in 2023/24, before edging back up to roughly 52.4 kilograms in 2024/25. In plain English, the service is there, but far too much food is still ending up in the wrong bin. That is not really a mystery of policy. It is a problem of routine, attention and, bluntly, the wasteful habits of residents.

The council plainly knows that. In its annual performance reporting it says an autumn 2024 campaign produced a 10 per cent increase in food waste collected for recycling. Elsewhere, on its own climate pages and in its district-wide carbon strategy, it says the campaign delivered a 15 per cent increase compared with the previous year. The exact percentages do not line up neatly, and that is something the council should explain more clearly. But the underlying point is obvious enough: it knows too much food waste is still being thrown away with general rubbish and has been trying to shift behaviour.

The wider performance picture tells much the same story. The council’s scrutiny materials says the district’s household recycling rate for 2024/25 was 46 per cent, above the reported UK figure of 44 per cent, but still short of the 50 per cent target. It also says the last 5 per cent of properties, mainly communal settings such as flats and HMOs, is the most difficult part of the service to crack. In other words, the council has already captured much of the easier ground. What remains is slower, harder and more stubborn.

There is also a practical problem beyond the kitchen door. Kent County Council says the current Folkestone & Hythe waste transfer arrangements are too constrained to deal with all kerbside streams locally, with food and residual waste currently tipped at Ashford instead. KCC says that out-of-district tipping cost more than £87,000 in 2024/25 and is not viable in the long term. So even when residents do the right thing, the back end of the system is still under pressure.

Still, none of that lets households off the hook. The council says raw and cooked solid food can go in the caddy, while liquids, oils and packaging should stay out. It also makes clear that refuse bins will still be collected if food waste ends up in them. That may be pragmatic from an operational point of view, but it also means the system depends heavily on residents choosing to do the sensible thing without being forced.

And that is really where the district now stands. The council can publish advice, run campaigns and remind people until it is blue in the face. But if households keep treating the food caddy as optional, the district will keep dragging food waste around in black bags, keep wasting a straightforward environmental gain, and keep making an existing service perform below its potential. There is encouragement in that, because using the caddy is easy and useful. There is also a polite reprimand in it, because by this point people can hardly say they have not been given the means.

Put simply, Folkestone & Hythe does not need another grand speech in the council chamber about food waste. It needs more residents across the district to stop scraping leftovers into the wrong bin and start using the caddy as part of their normal weekly routine. The council has already done the harder part by putting the service in place. Residents now need to meet it halfway.

The Shepway Vox Team

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