It’s part of a big rolloutGeneric image(Image: Western Mail)

Households in Plymouth and surrounding areas will be the first to benefit from weekly food waste recycling collections from March next year.

Properties in parts of Devonport, Plympton, Plymstock, Southway, Stoke and Whitleigh will be among some of those to benefit.

The service will eventually serve every household in Plymouth and will bring the city in line with most other UK local authorities.

The change means that instead of putting items such as fruit and vegetable peelings, tea bags, coffee grounds and plate scrapings into their brown bins, residents will be provided with a separate food waste caddy so they can be collected each week and converted into renewable energy.

Map of areas that will benefit in the first phase(Image: Plymouth City Council)

The roll out will be split into five phases, with the first beginning in March 2026.

Further phases will follow in July, August, September and November.

Before the service begins, households will be provided with two containers:

A small kitchen caddy to make separating your food waste from your rubbish easy, along with a roll of biodegradable linersA larger outdoor caddy for storing your food waste and putting it out for collection.

Some residents who live in flats, apartment blocks or houses of multiple occupation will be provided with a communal external bin, instead of individual outdoor caddies.

The households involved in the first phase of the roll out will all be contacted directly by post in the coming months with caddies delivered in ample time for the start of collections.

Residents can find out if their home is in the first phase by entering their address into an online tool on the Council website. The areas involved in each of the later phases will be announced in the Spring.

Councillor Tom Briars-Delve, Cabinet Member for the Environment and Climate Change, said: “We’ve been working really hard to get our food waste recycling service mobilised and it’s exciting to get to this stage of the process.

“We know many people in Plymouth are keen for us to get going with it and we also know that some households will want more information about how it will work in practice – and we will be providing lots of information and advice in the run up to them starting next year.

“The feedback from elsewhere is that people are generally surprised at just how much food waste they generate and how easy it is to get into the habit of separating it for weekly collection.

“The weekly collections will bring big benefits to the city, including increasing our recycling rates, reducing emissions and helping families save money by changing their habits after seeing the amount of food waste they collect.”

The Council’s Cabinet will debate the business case for the project and allocate funding from DEFRA to the appropriate budgets for roll out on Monday 8 December.

Find out more about the service and if you will be in the first phase at www.plymouth.gov.uk/food-waste-collections