An experimental waste food collection service is to be trialed in Croydon to reduce the amount of kitchen scraps being taken to landfill sites.

Croydon Council is to offer a weekly waste food collection service which, if successful, could reduce the amount of rubbish households throw away each week by 20 per cent.

Although composting remains the council's preferred solution for households to deal with organic waste, it also recognises that cutting the volume of food which ends up in a landfill site will bring significant environmental benefits - including a reduction in greenhouse gases.

A year-long trial will start in May with around 2,500 properties in the wards of Purley and Coulsdon West being supplied with separate containers and liners for peelings and dinner plate leftovers.

Secure lids will contain the smell of rotting food.

Councillor Phil Thomas, cabinet member for streets and environmental services, said: "For those who don't already compost their waste food, this trial will require little change in behaviour.

"Instead of throwing food into wheeled bins it will go into secure containers and be picked up separately. This could divert over 100 tonnes a year from landfill - a very worthwhile contribution to our recycling effort."

The leftovers, which could amount to 100 kilograms of waste a year from participating households, will be collected weekly and taken to Beddington Lane in Sutton. There it will receive special processing treatment making it sterile before it is turned into a product for horticultural purposes and landfill restoration.

More than £1million is to be spent on improving recycling in the borough.

This includes expanding kerbside collections, the introduction of mini recycling centres and upgrading the Factory Lane refuse and recycling centre to enable 20 different kinds of waste to be separately recycled.

A second recycling box will be introduced in Coulsdon East, Kenley, South Norwood, Woodside, Sanderstead and Selson and Ballards to include card, plastic and batteries for kerbside recycling. Green waste recycling will also be expanded in the same six wards.

The introduction of mini recycling centres for paper, card, glass and cans will be launched in March 2008, on an extra 400 sites on housing estates where kerbside recycling is not suitable.

Although some of the improvements have yet to be finalised with contractors, the council hopes many of the changes can be introduced from mid-summer.

Councillor Thomas added: "We're in no doubt that residents will recycle more if we make it easier for them.

"The improvements to the refuse and recycling centres at Purley Oaks and Fishers Farm have led to much greater usage. It's clear, then, that recycling in Croydon is catching on and, after years of under-investment in this crucial area, I am pleased that making the subject a priority is at last paying off in reducing the volume of waste going to landfill."