What should I do with my food waste?

Your best option is to use a thermal composter at home

If you or your neighbours use compost, it is more ecological to make your own compost than to send your food waste away in a truck and then have different compost shipped back to you later.

But it is strongly recommended that you use a thermal composter rather than a traditional compost bin. There are a couple of different reasons for this.

You can use it for meat and bones

A thermal composter has insulated walls to keep in the heat that decomposition naturally produces. These higher temperatures (over 50°C) break down meat, bones, and dairy more efficiently, minimising harmful bacteria, pathogens and bad smells. It's also too hot for pests like foxes, rats and badgers, which usually move in if you add meat products to a traditional compost bin.

It's better for the environment

But there's another more eco-conscious reason for choosing a hot composter, even if you don't eat meat or eggs.

Traditional composting systems, particularly unmanaged ones, can develop anaerobic pockets, which can release methane — a potent greenhouse gas. In contrast, hot composting maintains a more aerobic environment, minimizing methane production. By keeping the compost pile consistently hot and well-managed, a thermal composter can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to a traditional cold compost system, which is more prone to intermittent methane release from anaerobic zones.

Your best option is to use your local council's collection service

If you don't need compost at home, it's probably more eco-friendly to have the council collect and process your food waste. While their trucks often run on diesel, their collection routes are designed to be efficient, so it's unlikely they'll make an extra trip just for your waste unless food waste is your only disposal need.

They can turn your waste into useful energy

Instead of being composted, most Irish food waste goes through a process called anaerobic digestion. This process yields a liquid digestate which can be used as an agricultural fertiliser. Perhaps more importantly, the process also produces biogas — a mix of methane and CO₂. After further processing, biogas can be turned into biomethane, a fuel which closely resembles the properties of natural gas. From here, it can be injected into the national gas grid to heat Irish homes.

Why is burning biomethane eco-friendly?

Burning biomethane (or any fuel) emits CO₂ into the atmosphere. While releasing CO₂ certainly isn't ideal, biogas is considered carbon neutral. This is because biogas comes from organic materials above ground, unlike fossil fuels, which release new carbon from underground into the atmosphere.

In this closed-loop system, the CO₂ emitted from burning biomethane is reabsorbed by plants, which may later be used to produce more biogas and so on — making the whole cyclical process sustainable in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. For more examples like this, check out our page about circular living in Ireland.