Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of introducing new anaerobic digestion plants to create energy from food waste.

The Environment Act will require all local authorities in England to arrange for the collection of food waste for recycling. Our preference is for food waste to be separately collected for treatment by anaerobic digestion as this presents the best environmental outcome for the treatment of unavoidable food waste.

In 2021 the Department for Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy launched the Green Gas Support Scheme (GGSS) to support the construction of new anaerobic digestion plants that inject biomethane to the gas grid. Developers must ensure that at least 50% of all biomethane by energy content is produced using waste or residue feedstocks. This will ensure that energy is reclaimed from food waste collected under Defra’s Recycling Consistency reforms.