CHANGES are likely to be made to the collection of household garden and kitchen waste in Thurrock next year – with residents being given an additional two bins, one of which will be a caddy.

Currently the council operates a three bin system, with a green (or grey/black) bin used for general waste, a blue bin for recyclable materials and a brown bin (which is emptied fortnightly) used for garden and kitchen waste – though the council has been keen to urge residents not to use it for kitchen waste, and particularly kitchen waste in compostable bags.

As it stands the general waste is bulked and transferred to Allington, an energy recovery site in Kent where it is incinerated to generate power that is fed into the National Grid this supplies power and heat to homes across Kent.

The co-mingled dry recycling materials are delivered to a materials recycling facility where the individual materials are mechanically separated. The sorted materials are then bulked and sold on to processors to be recycled as source materials.

The garden and food waste is composted at high temperatures for a period of time before being spread in fields in piles for its final decomposition. The end material is used as a soil improver or natural fertiliser on agricultural land. The processing does not take sufficient time for the compostable food bags to degrade. For this reason Thurrock's environmental services department has advised that brown bins should not be used for the disposal of food waste. If they are, the 'contaminated waste' cannot be used for the decomposition process.

However, if plans detailed to a meeting of the council's cleaner, greener and safer overview and scrutiny committee are approved – and there is more work to do before the proposal comes back to the committee and then on the cabinet for approval – residents will get two new bins.

The smaller kitchen caddy should be used to store food waste in the house, before it is transferred to a new outdoor bin. It may be that the new outdoor bin will be an attachment that fits on to the existing brown bit – but the finer details have not yet been worked out.

Committee members were told there are no plans at this point in time to charge for the additional bins and collection service – nor the existing brown bin collection service. The option for charging separately for that has been discussed but rejected in the past.

The council will not be supplying the compostable caddy bags.