Cavan County Council have announced that from the 1st July 2015 Brown Bins are being introduced into the following towns in County Cavan:

• Ballyjamesduff
• Bailieborough
• Virginia
• Kingscourt
• Cootehill

Full details can be found at Cavan Brown Bin

The Council allows for green/graden waste, food waste (cooked & uncooked) and other items such as pizza boxes and wine corks to be be put in the brown bin, and they endorse the use of  biodegradable bags. The clear unambiguous guidelines issued by Cavan County Council will be of great help to Cavan householders, and indeed all Irish householders, who have received disparate messages from waste service providers as to what can be put in the brown bin. Well done Cavan County Council

Last week France’s parliament voted to ban food waste in its larger supermarkets – outlawing the destruction of unsold food.

Under the new law, supermarkets will have to prevent food waste and will be forced to donate unsold but edible food to charity, or for use as animal feed or compost.

Also according to L’Express magazine, children in France will now be given  lessons on avoiding and preventing food waste, as part of their school curriculum.

These initiatives show how simple effective legislation can be used to reduce food waste, not just today, but into the future. Perhaps such an approach would help to reduce the one million tonnes of food that is wasted here in Ireland every year. Vive la France pour son approche!

It was recently claimed that waste recovery rates (including incineration) in Ireland were running at 80{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8}, and that the EU statistics did not reflect this. The statistics in question  stated that in 2013, we each produced 586  kilos of waste of which 34{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} was recylced, 6{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} was composted, 42{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} was land filled and 18{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} was incinerated (presumably by being shipped abroad ). In other words 60{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} of our waste goes into the Grey Bin.

These finding are disputed in some quarters and possibly rightly so ,but real on the ground figures here in Galway City indicate that each household produces between 60 and 70 kilos of waste per month of which approximately 50-55{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} is recycled via Green and Brown Bins. The remaining 30-35kgs is consigned to the Grey Bin. Compost rates run at approximately 20kg per month, with dry recyclables running at about 15kg per m

So even in city like Galway with a long  successful history in the Recycling and Segregation of Waste including Food Waste, there is still plenty of room for improvement both on the waste generation front and on the amount of waste that we do not recycle via either the Green or Brown Bin. And Brustibin, a Galwegian, was designed just to help you do that!