The new service will be rolled out to 102,673 households in total with 59,099 Poole houses, 12,365 Poole flats, and 31,209 Bournemouth flats. Food waste collections will for these households will be every week on the same day as rubbish and recycling starting from April 6, 2026.

From January to March 2026, all new households benefiting from the service will be delivered everything they need to get started.  Individual households will receive a kitchen caddy and an external food waste bin, and flats will receive a kitchen caddy and communal external food waste bin.

The expansion of the service comes as part of the UK Government’s Simpler Recycling reforms, designed to make recycling easier and more consistent across England.

For BCP residents, these changes will be free and mean a consistent food waste recycling service is in place, so no matter where you live the rules will be the same and recycling will be simpler.

Food waste will be taken to a special recycling plant in Dorset where it is broken down to create renewable gas which will be used to make electricity going to the national grid. The process also produces a rich soil booster that supports local farms to grow crops, so they don’t need to use as many chemical fertilisers. .

Around 30% of household rubbish bin contents are food waste by separating this it cuts down on the amount of waste that ends up in landfill.

Every bit of food waste recycled helps cut council spending, meaning more money can go towards services that benefit everyone in the community.

Councilor Andy Hadley, Cabinet Member for Sustainability and Environment said: “I know the people in Poole have wanted this for quite some time not least because they know that Bournemouth and Christchurch have it. I think it is something that people will really welcome, it allows them to separate out their food from other waste, it should also save the money because actually when you see how much food you’re throwing away separately from other stuff, then maybe that will give some people a cause to think about it in a sort of I’m buying this stuff and I’m throwing it away.

“This is a free service, it’s part of the national reforms, and it is about reducing the waste that goes to landfill and we will get energy from it and compost that the farmers will use.

“We can’t force people, but we want  to get it right, it’s a better resource, it gets used. So it’s beneficial to people’s tax bill, but more than that, it’s beneficial to them as a household, it’s a good thing for everybody. We need to get back to doing things in a more sensible way but there will probably be hiccups along the way, and we just need people to be a little bit tolerant

As the scheme is part of national recycling reforms it has taken longer to roll out the service across all areas of BCP. Cllr Hadley said  “The national reforms have been some years in the coming, and I think we thought it would happen quicker, but there’s a significant cost involved in setting up the lorries, buying caddies for in the house and for outside. So, there’s a significant cost and it is part of the national reforms, they’ll [the government] pay for that. So, we would be keen not to load our local taxpayers with funding it if we could get the money from government.”