For years, most organisations treated food waste as little more than “wet general waste” - something scraped into a black bag and forgotten about but under the UK’s new Simpler Recycling reforms, that approach is rapidly disappearing.
Businesses with more than ten full-time employees at a single location are now required to separately collect food waste, with household collections expanding across England in the years ahead. In other words, food waste is no longer simply a sustainability choice, it's becoming standard operational compliance.
But unlike many environmental obligations, this one actually makes genuine environmental sense.
When separated correctly and sent to Anaerobic Digestion (AD), food waste becomes a renewable energy source capable of generating electricity, biogas and agricultural digestate while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to landfill or residual disposal.
This latest Circular Guidance Note (CGN 08) explores:
- the legal requirements behind food waste collections,
- the environmental benefits of Anaerobic Digestion,
- the difference between AD and In-Vessel Composting (IVC),
- the growing industry frustration around so-called “compostable” packaging.
One of the biggest myths in modern waste management is that “compostable” automatically means environmentally beneficial which isn't always the case.
As always, the aim of the CGN series is not greenwashing, jargon or virtue signalling — but practical circular thinking grounded in real-world waste operations and compliance. CGN 07 - link - more like this (Anaerobic Digestion) - link - more like this (food waste) - link - please note - website address is incorrect.
As with all documents within the CGN (Circular Guidance Note) series, every effort has been made to ensure the information provided is factual, practical, and helpful at the time of writing however, legislation changes, guidance evolves and occasionally mistakes happen. If you spot anything within this CGN that is incorrect, misleading, outdated or could be better explained, please leave a comment below together with supporting information or clarification. Following review and verification, corrections or revisions will be made where appropriate and contributors will happily be credited for their input should they wish. The aim of the CGN series is not simply to publish information but to build a growing, reliable, real-world resource library for everyone involved in waste, recycling, compliance and circular economy discussions.
I have always believed that in waste management, getting it right matters more than pretending to already know everything.
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