Sustainable environment

What you can do

Lots of food is grown where it wouldn’t grow naturally, and needs extra water and chemicals to grow. If it’s travelled a long way to get to the shops, there are emissions from transport and sometimes refrigeration too, so making the best use of it is really important. The ‘food miles’ linked to the items you buy can be reduced by buying local or at least British food where you can.

Food waste can be reduced by:

• buying locally grown food

• growing your own, either at home in your garden or on an allotment

• sticking to seasonal British food

• grow a pot of your favourite herbs on your kitchen windowsill

• visit local farms where you can enjoy picking fresh fruit and veg to enjoy in the summer, and even pumpkins for Hallowe’en. 

Some sorts of food waste are unavoidable, like orange peel, teabags and bones. The weekly food waste collections we make help turn these into compost, which helps to grow more food. 

What we do

Allotments are available at a number of sites across the borough, where you can grow your own food and enjoy some healthy exercise at the same time. There are over 200 plots at 6 sites.

We host a vibrant Farmers Market each month.

We run a convenient weekly collection of food waste to help residents. This collects cooked and uncooked food, meat, fruit and veg and turns it into electricity and compost.