As the urgency of recycling waste hits home, more and more people have begun to sift out plastic bottles, paper, cans and even shoes and batteries from their rubbish.

The need to recycle these products to end our reliance on landfill has been drummed home by the Government, local authorities and environmental charities.

If residents play by the rules — and those who don’t can incur fines of up to £1,000 — all that remains in household bins is a diminishing pot of products that cannot be recycled by Barnet Council.

But the irony is that the most recyclable of all materials is the one most likely to be left behind.

Last year the council conducted three waste audits from a sample of 300 households across the borough. On all three occassions, 30 per cent of what was found in residents’ rubbish bins was kitchen and garden waste.

Food and garden waste can be collected in a separate green bin, to be shredded, baked at 60 degrees for three weeks, and left to decompose in the open for ten weeks to create compost.

But most of it isn’t. In the last year 30,000 tonnes of kitchen and garden waste went to landfill.

While composting rates are dramatically improving — they have almost quadrupled in the last five years — in the last year only 17,876 tonnes were composted.

Councillor Andrew Harper, cabinet member for the environment, said: ”No one likes to see food waste going to waste when it can be used more naturally and effectively, but Barnet does much better than most.

“We have residents who want to play their part and the council has responded by making the facilities available. We will continue to do that.”

The huge financial and environmental consequences of sending food waste to landfill are driving this political will.

Last year, bioedegradable waste in landfill contributed 40 per cent of the UK’s methane emissions, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Landfill tax shot up to £32 per tonne in the last budget, so at the current rate kitchen and garden waste going to landfill from Barnet will cost the taxpayer around £1 million.

And the embarrassing fact that our society is wasting so much edible food has also shot to the top of the agenda.

At July’s G8 summit in Japan, Gordon Brown urged Britons to cut down on the estimated 4.1m tonnes of food wasted annually.

But the offenders are not just residents who discard food that has gone off in their fridges. Supermarkets have been lambasted both for their role in encouraging excessive food shopping and for dumping an estimated 1.6m tonnes of food a year that is past its sell-by date, according to the Sustainable Development Commission.

A Hendon charity has also identified another offender. Gift, based in Hendon Way, redistributes tens of thousands of loaves of bread from bakeries every year that would otherwise go to landfill.

Ophira Starr, project manager of Gift, said: “There are bakeries that have piles and piles of bread and pastries and they just throw it all away.

“We collect sacks of it from them, gather it all in one house and make it up into food parcels.”

The charity collected five tonnes of surplus food from the Jewish community this year alone.

“It goes to homeless shelters, refugees and poor families who we identify through word of mouth and social organisations,” said Ms Starr.

“Each parcel is worth about £10 and you can imagine what impact that can have on a weekly food budget for a poor family.”

When she asked bakeries why they consistently overproduced, Miss Starr was told it was in case there was a surprise increase in demand.

Miss Starr added: “We like to think they’re producing one lot of bread for paying customers and another for people who need it but can’t afford it. If they produce too much, it’s better for us.”

m For more information on reducing food waste visit lovefoodhatewaste.com