Food Waste Collection Service

We are using a specialist distribution company for most households and they started delivering the caddy packs on Tuesday 26 August 2025. We anticipate it will take up to 7 weeks to complete.

You don't need to be at home to receive your caddy pack, but if you're planning to be away from your home for a period of time, you may wish to ask a neighbour to look after your caddy pack for you, until you return.

Your caddy pack will be delivered onto your property. This is likely to be between 7am and 4pm on a week day. 

Important: When you receive your caddy pack, please ensure you store your caddy liners somewhere dry, and keep the information leaflet safe.

Deliveries of food waste caddy packs are taking place from 26 August 2025, and will take up to 7 weeks to complete.

If you think we might have missed your home when delivering the food waste caddies, please check with your neighbours and check our progress on this web page too. If we have missed you, or if there is an issue with your caddy or the items inside it, please complete this form: Food Waste Caddy Deliveries - Reporting an Issue or call customer services on 01264 368000 or 01794 527700.

If approved, replacement caddies and caddy liners will be delivered within 10 working days. If you have reported a damaged caddy, please leave it out for the team to collect.

No - all new food waste caddies, and shared bins, will be provided free of charge as part of the service change.

The food waste collection service is a weekly collection service. We'll write to you in September to let you know your food waste collection day. 

If you've been given a kerbside caddy, you'll need to put this out for collection at the kerbside, by 7am on your collection day. You'll need to present the caddy with the handle upright, as this locks the caddy lid, and helps the collection team.

Your caddy will either be emptied directly into the vehicle, or into a wheeled bin the collection team use to make their collections more efficient. Our new food waste collection vehicles can collect food waste directly from caddies, or from a wheeled bin.

If you've been given a shared wheeled bin, the food waste collection team will collect this from your bin store area, and return it once its emptied.

Your kitchen caddy has been provided to help you collect your food waste in the home. To keep your caddy clean, you can use a compostable caddy liner, they can be purchased from local shops or online. Alternatively, you can line your caddy with newspaper, paper towels or kitchen roll. Food waste can be put into your caddy loose too, if you prefer. Once your kitchen caddy is full, you empty it into your kerbside caddy, or shared bin, ready for your collection day.

Here is a list of what we can and cannot collect:

Yes - you'll be given a starter pack of compostable liners with your caddy pack. It's expected that the starter pack (a roll of 26 liners) should last a household approximately 10 weeks. If you wish to continue to use compostable caddy liners once you have used up your starter pack supply, they can be purchased from local shops or online. Alternatively, you can line your caddy with newspaper or paper towels. Food waste can be put into your caddy loose too, if you prefer.

Important: When you receive your caddy pack, please ensure you store your caddy liners somewhere dry.

Between October 2025 and April 2026, the collected food waste will be shared between two local anaerobic digestion facilities - one near Basingstoke and another near Bournemouth. From April 2026, all of the collected food waste will be processed at the anaerobic digestion facility near Basingstoke.

At the anaerobic digestion facility, the food waste is broken down by micro-organisms in the absence of oxygen. The methane-rich biogas generated during this process can be used as a fuel and the remaining product can be used as a nutrient rich fertiliser. If you wish to find out more, visit: Herriard AD Facility 

We recognise that some households already have an alternative solution for their food waste including home composting. Our food waste collection service will collect food waste that some people don't usually compost such as cooked food, raw meat and bones, so it can be used for just these items if that's preferred. 

If you don't produce much food waste at home, you don't have to put your caddy out for collection regularly. You can put your caddy out for collection when you have the need. Please do not store up your food waste for longer than a week. 

The kitchen caddy is 5 litres. It measures H216mm x W246mm x D204mm.

The kerbside caddy is 23 litres. It measures H374mm x W324mm x D350mm.

The communal bin (for bin stores) is 140 litres. It measures H1049mm x W486mm x D563mm.

Our standard caddy pack is 1 x kitchen caddy and 1 x kerbside caddy per household.  

If you live in a flat or other shared accommodation, we will only provide 1 x kitchen caddy and 1 x shared wheeled bin per bin store.

If you feel your household needs an additional caddy, or if you feel your bin store needs an additional wheeled bin, please contact the team - the details are below.

We have made contact with all our existing assisted collection service customers, to see if they will need help with their kerbside caddies.

If you need help moving any of your bins, we have more information about this service on our Assisted Bin Collections web page. 

We still support the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, and our new collection service will work alongside it. Reducing your food waste will always be the preferred option, where possible, and not only that, it saves you money!  The average UK family could save £83 per month, around £1,000 per year, by saving food from the bin. Take a look at their website for useful hints, tips and recipes. 

We understand that there can be difficulties with shared or communal bins so we will be working with each managing agent/landlord to help the new service be successful. We will also be working with residents to support them through the change to the new collection service. 

Food waste will be collected weekly, from lockable caddies, which limits the likelihood of pests or odours.

Food waste collections have been provided for many years by councils across the country, and we have learned from their experiences when designing our service.

The kitchen caddies can be easily washed out, and can even go in your dishwasher. The kerbside caddy is easy to rinse out too.  Using a liner will help your caddies stay cleaner for longer.

Food waste collections are common place across the country, and as a result there are lots of top tips out there. Take a look at this video for some ideas:

We have a fleet of 7.5 tonne specialist food waste collection vehicles. They're able to access the wide range of rural and urban properties across the borough. Each vehicle has a small container on the back which we can empty the kerbside caddies directly into. This container will then tip the food waste into the vehicle's main skip-like body. Each vehicle can also empty wheeled bins. All of our fleet, including our new food waste collection vehicles, run on HVO - Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil - a renewable fuel with reduced greenhouse emissions of up to 95%.

Some of the set up and ongoing service costs have been covered by the Government, as it is a new, mandated service. As we are rolling out the service five months early, we will be covering these operational costs ourselves. This new service is an important part of our work to tackle climate change and we know from speaking to our residents that they are keen for us to help them to recycle more at the kerbside.  

Yes - if you need any of our printed materials to be translated or provided in a larger print, please email us: foodwaste@testvalley.gov.uk