Seasonal yield and fuel consumed for domestic, organic waste collections in currently operational door-to-door and bring-type collection systems

The European Commission is tightening waste laws, and many local authorities, particularly in countries with low recycling rates, face the question of what system to introduce for the source-separate collection of food waste from householders. This study provides empirical data in form of fuel consumed and waste yield from four councils that already have source separate organic waste collections in operation. Two systems were compared: (1) door-to-door collection and (2) bring systems where the householder walks to the bin in her/his street to drop off organic waste. Fuel consumption for the collection operation with the bring system was dramatically lower compared to the door-to-door system. Organic waste yield was constant over the observation year in the door-to-door system employing small 20- to 30-l bins, but increased notably in the summer with the bring system that used 240-l bins. The metric used to quantify seasonality was the summer/winter yield ratio. As commercial waste companies do not normally allow the making of data public, this is a rare opportunity to learn from collection systems currently in operation.