Windfall fruit

As the nights draw in and we enter the season of 'mists and mellow fruitfulness' many of us will find our gardens and driveways carpeted in windfall fruit. 

We have had a few queries of late about this relating to this issue because whilst of course the best thing to do with windfall fruit is a) Eat it! and b) home compost it some folk seem to be unsure about if you can include this with your garden waste for the council collections.

Yes windfall fruit and vegetables from the garden are garden waste not food waste.  So it is perfectly OK to add this to the Councils garden waste collection service.

The confusion seems to have arisen because most garden waste in Shropshire goes for on-farm composting and following the BSE & Foot & Mouth strict Animal Byproduct Regulations were introduced which mean that food waste cannot be composted on farms.
Whilst of course fruit and vegetables are not an animal byproduct, the ban applies to anything from the kitchen so captures all food waste.  The distinction with material from your garden (whether edible or not) is clearly laid out in guidelines produced by the Department for the Environment.  The point at which this would change would be if you brought the items into your kitchen.  Anything which has been in the kitchen, could potentially be cross contaminated with pathogens from other foodstuffs and thus would then be deemed to be kitchen waste which cannot currently be composted on farms due to the Animal Byproduct Regulations.

Hopefully that clears up any confusion? Because looking around my area I can see tonnes of fruit all over the ground right now and I would hate to think that might end up in landfill when it is perfectly OK to compost it with your garden waste.