Island pupils' bid to access food waste recycling ... with a little help from King Charles

Arran is the largest island in Scotland without a dedicated food waste service - meaning tonnes of leftovers are binned every year.

So youngsters decided to do something to fix the issue - and are now on course to ensure more than eight tonnes of food waste can be composted rather than incinerated.

Their work is being carried out with the help of The King’s Foundation, the charity founded by King Charles.

A group of 11 third year pupils enrolled on the charity’s Food For The Future programme, based at Dumfries House in East Ayrshire.

They have been inspired to solve a lasting issue for fellow islanders, who are unable to ensure leftover food can be easily composted.

Lucy Urquhart-Dixon is faculty leader of technical subjects at Arran High School. She is leading pupils now planning to pilot a composting programme with the help of charity Arran Eco-Savvy, Nature Scotland and tutors at The King's Foundation.

She said the course made her pupils mull over the question “what happens to Arran food waste?”

The answer was that a ferry takes food waste off the island mixed in with general waste.

They started to think about how it could stay on Arran and be put to better use.

One of the issues that really irked the youngsters was the fact their parents pay the same council tax rates as the rest of the local authority area - but for fewer services.

Arran Eco Savvy redirects food waste from the Co-op to local villages, but household waste goes straight in the bin.

Thanks to funding from the charity, pupils were able to put 10 compost bins into the community as part of a pilot project and asked people to measure their food waste.

Those 10 bins, in one week, saved 45kg of food.

They have now handed out another 25 bins with 8.2 tonnes of food now expected to be saved in a year.

The project to help supply dedicated food waste bins and encourage residents to use them, as well as requesting a change to North Ayrshire Council’s collection service, would save the expensive and polluting process of incinerating all food waste, which the council says creates “energy recovery”.

With a survey by pupils finding that 4.5kgs per week of food waste could be composted by each household on Arran, the island’s 2,266 homes would compost more than 500 tonnes of food waste a year given the facility to do so.

With a land mass of around 432 square kilometres and a population of around 5000, Arran is believed to be one of Scotland’s largest communities without a dedicated food waste service in place.

“It would represent an immeasurably more environmentally-friendly process, which nine months down the line creates compost to enrich the soil,” said Mrs Urquhart-Dixon,

“The children are so ambitious and passionate about reducing food waste.

“I am confident they will achieve their goal of as many households as possible on Arran having access to a dedicated compost bin and knowing both how to use it and the wide range of benefits of doing so.”

Jenny Hume and Charlie Gilmour, both 14, took part in the project. Both are generational Arran islanders.

“Mrs Urquhart-Dixon told us it would be a great opportunity to take part,” Charlie said. “And she was right.

“We didn’t realise it was such a big issue and it’s become so real to us now, affecting the island by what we’ve learned.”

Jenny added: “Everyone was really keen to do it because it was a really exciting experience and really beneficial to learn so much about food waste, especially as we'd get to impact our communities on it.”

Residents on Arran currently place food waste in the general waste bin, which is ferried five times a week to the mainland.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency will not allow a dedicated composting area on Arran due to worries over run-off.

Currently, the neighbouring Isle of Cumbrae, a smaller island with a population of around 1400, receives a weekly food waste collection.

North Ayrshire Council has said that reaching Cumbrae is a 30-minute ferry journey from Ardrossan, whereas Arran is a prohibitive 55 minutes by boat.

Pupils canvassed Arran residents and found more than half of respondents said they would use a compost bin if provided with one. While North Ayrshire Council hasn’t responded to the school’s request to provide caddies to the island, local charity Eco-savvy has supplied almost £500 worth of bins while Nature Scotland has donated £1000.

The island community is really behind the children’s efforts, which include requests to community halls to host a community food waste bin for use by local residents and a display of posters across Arran with links to recipes designed to use up leftovers.

Dumfries House is the headquarters of The King’s Foundation, the charity founded by His Majesty King Charles III in 1990.

The Food For The Future programme comprises a series of practical masterclasses where pupils have the opportunity to learn from experts in farming, food production and cooking alongside developing skills in connected science-based activity.

The benefits have been plain, Mrs Urquhart-Dixon said, for both her pupils and the island generally.

“I think the children have learned to be tenacious,” she said.

“If there's something that they want to try and fix, to just keep keep doing it.

“The resilience of living on an island and having that boat constantly coming up as Amber when we're coming away, it hasn't phased any of them.

“They've really learned it's their island. They live there. This is their future. And they were outraged.”

North Ayrshire Council was approached for comment but unable to respond in time for Scotland on Sunday’s deadline.