FOOD waste bins are to be delivered to 7,000 homes in Pendle next month as part of a pioneering scheme.

Residents will receive five-litre ‘caddies’ designed to store food waste, plus a 25-litre outdoor caddy for weekly collections.

The borough is the first in East Lancashire to put a food waste collection initiative into practice. Town hall chiefs are confident the scheme will be popular.

The kitchen caddy can be filled with waste including, vegetable peelings, chicken trimmings and even bones.Each will be lined with a compostable bag provided by Pendle Council.

The outdoor caddy has a lockable lid to prevent animals getting in.

Carole Taylor, Pendle waste services manager, said: “We want residents to get into the habit of scraping their leftovers into the kitchen caddies at the end of meal times. And there’s so much food that we trim off before cooking – that can go in there too.

“The only food we don’t want residents to put into the caddies is cooking oils or other liquid foods.”

Both receptacles will be delivered to terrace homes in the Cloverhill, Whitefield and Bradley areas of Nelson, the Horsfield, Vivary Bridge and Waterside areas of Colne, as well as properties in Brierfield, Barrowford, Barnoldswick and Earby.

After collection, the food waste will be taken to a site in Todmorden to be turned into compost for use at local farms. Residents are urged not to use plastic bags in the kitchen caddy as these cannot be composted.

The food waste collections are financed initially through £70,000 of funding from WRAP, a national organ-isation working with coun-cils to encourage greater levels of recycling.

Lancashire County Council allocated £50,000 to buy the receptacles.

Information packs will be delivered to homes set to receive the caddies by the middle of this month. Road-shows are also planned.

Delivery of containers will take place between April 12 and 16 and collections will start on April 19.