New bins to collect waste food from households in Wolverhampton will begin to be rolled out in January.

Residents will be given two food ‘caddies’, a 23-litre one to go outside and a five-litre one to go inside as part of the £600,000 scheme which has been funded by the Government.

They will be in addition to collections for regular and garden rubbish, a box for paper, glass and tins, and a bag for plastic and cardboard. It means families will have to sort their rubbish five ways until the recycling bags and boxes are phased out during 2011 and 2012.

Other areas that have received the food caddies have complained that they create a nasty odour, especially in summer months.

But Wolverhampton City Council says they will be collected weekly to tackle the problem.

Council spokesman Gurdip Thandi said: “The Wolverhampton Waste Partnership will be introducing our food recycling service in January, as planned.

“The scheme will be rolled out to all homes across the city over an eight week period by March 31.

“Due to the nature of the waste, food recycling will be collected weekly on the same day as their normal refuse.”

Garden waste and collections of paper and metal will remain fortnightly in Wolverhampton.

Mr Thandi said: “Introducing a food waste collection service is necessary for the authority to achieve a 50 per cent target, set by the Government, for recycling of household waste.

“We are taking a two-phase approach to the reconfiguration of the recycling service. Phase one includes introducing the food waste recycling.

“We are looking to implement phase two, which will include the phasing out of bags and boxes, in 2011 and 2012.

“This is being done because we want to minimise any disruption to Wolverhampton residents.”

The food waste will be taken to an “anaerobic digestions plant” where it will be broken down and made into compost.

Households currently have two wheelie bins for regular and garden waste, a green box for cans, paper and glass and a white bag for cardboard and plastic.

The bags have drawn criticism since they were introduced for blowing away at the rate of around 500 a month.

Wolverhampton’s environment boss Councillor Barry Findlay has said that the move towards food waste recycling will offer residents a choice about what they want to do with their waste.

Some households already put raw vegetable peelings and fruit waste into their own compost bins. Councillor Findlay said the council did not want to discourage people from continuing to do that.

The authority will need to spend £1.17million in 2011 to replace all eight of the lorries it uses to collect recyclable waste.

It costs £12.73million a year to run Wolverhampton’s bin collections.