Longford supports National Food Waste Recycling Week

The second year of the National Food Waste Recycling Week awareness campaign began on Monday, June 5 and runs until June 11 and it is being supported by Longford County Council.
This campaign, managed by MyWaste.ie will provide practical advice, with easy to follow hints and tips to encourage everyone to recycle more of their food waste.

This year, the aim is to ensure that people understand that food waste needs to be fully separated from all packaging such as plastic or other containers to prevent contamination at the compost and anaerobic digestion facilities leading to higher quality recycling.

In Ireland, we waste about 800,000 tonnes of food each year, according to current best estimates. Growing, processing and transporting food uses a huge amount of resources, such as land, water, energy and fertiliser. If food is wasted, these resources are wasted too. The EPA estimates that food waste costs the average Irish household about €60 per month or €700 per year. That’s an annual national cost of €1.29 billion.

The overall aim of the campaign is to generate awareness of the role of food waste recycling in diverting this valuable resource from landfill and allowing it to be transformed into renewable energy and fertilisers for horticulture and agriculture use in Ireland. This will have a lasting impact as it will create green jobs here now and into the future.

For more information on the National Food Waste Recycling Week 2023 and to check local events, see www.mywaste.ie/national- food-waste-recycling-week/