Have you got a rubbish attitude?

Have you got attitude? Well, have ya? OK, I don't mean of the chest-pufty swaggering type, but of the chin-stroking, brow-furrowing variety, and in particular regarding food waste collections.

Pondering such things won't make you feel like a movie star, but you'd certainly be contemplating something topical and important. As we've seen these last few months, there is tremendous spleen vented by some over the notion people might be asked to separate their food waste for collection in so-called 'slop buckets'.

So do people have a problem with food waste collections? Our new survey sought to answer that very question. It turns out that the vast majority of people don't find them a nuisance at all and think all councils should provide them.

Positive attitudes

Researchers talked to over a thousand householders in two rural and two urban neighbourhoods, one each of which already has a food waste collection. They found more than two thirds of people (69%) don't think food waste collections cause a nuisance.

And it's worth looking separately at the neighbourhoods with and without food waste collections because whilst the majority (56%) of those without the service don't think it would be a nuisance this figure jumps to 82% for those who already have it.

This is particularly encouraging because it suggests the experience of separating food waste dispels previous concerns about doing so.

That's good news for councils considering rolling out these collections, and they'll be even more encouraged to hear that three quarters of respondents said all councils should offer this service - 90% of those who already have it and 65% of those that don't yet.

If you've a moment please do check out the full report for the other interesting titbits I've not got time to go into here.

Our hope is that councils yet to offer food waste collections will now feel a little less trepidation about doing so. So far only 143 of England's 322 local authorities collect food waste, compared to all 22 Welsh councils.

Food waste rots in landfill releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, so we need to stop it ending up there. These collections are also essential to the Government's plans to generate renewable energy from food scraps through anaerobic digestion, a good thing so long as still greater effort is being made to cut down on food waste to start with.

What's in the bin?

Which leads me on to another aspect of the report, concerning how much food people think they throw away. The Daily Telegraph reported that the survey showed food collections fail to cut food waste. In fact, it showed that most people didn't think they threw away more or less food since the service began, an important difference as perception often has an annoying habit of failing to match reality. It's relatively early days for separate food waste collections in England but already a couple of councils have shown us 'before and after' data indicating once food waste is collected the total amount of food and associated packaging that's binned decreases. In other words, there is less food waste in the black bag and the new food waste collection than there was previously in the black bag collection.

No-one's 100% sure why this is but the most common explanation offered by those working in the field is that the act of separating food scraps confronts people with how much they're wasting and can help them reduce it.

So though the report doesn't show a significant link between people getting the service and observing a change in how much they waste, it could be they just didn't take so much notice of how much they used to throw into their black-bag bin so can't make an accurate comparison. Or perhaps people just don't like to admit they waste food.

Either way, what's most striking to me about this research is just how positive attitudes to food waste collections are. The vast majority of people don't think they're a nuisance, can see their benefits, and want their councils to introduce them.

So let's hope England's politicians catch up with their voters and roll out food waste collections nationally asap.