Pet food belongs in the food caddy. The pouch does not.

The binman has it right

Leftover pet food belongs in the food waste caddy. The packaging does not. That is the rule for households in Cambridgeshire and it is the same rule for every business in West London, Surrey and the Thames Valley that now puts food waste out for collection. Contamination is contamination, whether the offending item is a plastic pouch in a kitchen caddy at home or a stack of them tipped into a back of house bin on a Monday morning.

The headline answer stands. Pet food, in the caddy. Pouch, in general waste. Compostable bag or paper bag around the food if you want to avoid the smell. For a commercial kitchen that handles portion controlled pet food, like a kennel, a cattery, a vet or a pub that lets in dogs, the rule works in exactly the same direction. Scrape the food into the caddy. Put the pouch in general waste.

Why this is a business problem, not just a household one

Since Simpler Recycling came in on 31 March 2025, FJL has watched commercial kitchens shift the way they handle food waste. That shift covers vets, boarding kennels, pet shops, groomers and anywhere else that opens a pouch or a tin as part of the working day. It also covers every pub, cafe and office that scrapes a plate.

FJL has seen the shift clearly. We now run 211 food waste collection services across our round, and 63% of them started on or after 31 March 2025. 91 new food waste services came on in 2025 alone and another 57 have started so far in 2026. For context, in 2023 we added four services in the full year. The rules changed and the kitchens that were throwing food into general waste have had to adapt fast.

The headline number is the growth, but the mix tells a quieter story. Food waste is still only 4% of the bins we empty on our scheduled rounds across 1,065 commercial customers. Most of what we lift is general waste at 56% and paper and card at 31%. That 4% has a long way left to run, which is exactly why the pouch question matters now, before caddy use becomes habit on sites that have never done it before.

The pouch is where it goes wrong

When a caddy is contaminated, the packaging is a far more common culprit than the food. Pet food pouches are foil lined, often with a plastic laminate, and they cannot be composted, cannot be anaerobically digested and cannot be recycled kerbside. Tipped into a caddy, they contaminate the load. The food was fine. The wrapper ruined it. If you work in a kitchen that opens pouches every service, your biggest contamination risk is the pouch, not anything on the plate.

Tins are different again. Metal tins can go through a dry mixed recycling stream, provided they are rinsed and empty. They do not go in the food caddy either. If your site is still putting dog food tins in with the leftovers, you are doing the same damage as the pouch problem, you are just doing it slower.

What to do

• Put a laminated sign on every food waste bin that says food in, packaging out, with a photograph of a pouch crossed through.
• Issue compostable caddy liners to the kitchen and ban every other kind of bag.
• Separate pouches and foil to general waste, and rinsed tins to dry mixed recycling, at the point of opening.
• Audit a week of your food caddy before your next collection. If you find packaging, retrain that shift the same day.