Councils are going to great lengths to avoid dumping 350,000 tonnes of food waste into landfills each year. It can handle 75,000 tonnes a year of food scraps from food manufacturers and councils. Bouskova says anaerobic digestion is particularly suited to food waste, such as dairy, meat and fish, because the smell can be contained. That is a concern because, while some council waste water treatment systems can cope with that, many can’t. Scottish businesses producing more than 5kg of food scraps per week have had to divert them from landfill since 2015.
