A Possible business opportunity has emerged for an investor to create Cumbria’s first dedicated food recycling plant ahead of huge Government-led changes to waste collection rules.

Presently, segregated food waste is not collected for recycling across the county and there are no existing facilities to process it to create energy – though there are other types of ‘anaerobic digestion’ facilities on farmland across the region.

But councils look set to take on extra waste collection and recycling responsibilities following the roll out of the new Government legislation.

A report considered by Copeland council that such food-specific processing plants would need to be developed in Cumbria, or arrangements made to send food waste out of county.

But Coun David Moore, suggested that the project to develop a new plant or to adapt existing facilities might be something for someone to consider.

He said: “Putting a commercial hook on it, somebody in Cumbria is going to need an anaerobic digestor to take all this food waste. I think there are perhaps opportunities there.

“There are also farms in this area that are running those but they mainly run on slurry but could look at taking food sources.”

However, a meeting of Copeland’s executive also heard of the many technical, practical and legal challenges involved in converting food waste to energy.

Coun Steven Morgan stressed that food waste comes in “many different forms”, rendering some loads “unusable”.
He added: “It is a difficult technical problem to turn food waste into energy, but it is possible.

Disposing of recyclable food waste and the product that comes out of this process also comes with its own legal implications, a meeting heard.