Ministers want a slop bucket for food waste to be placed in every kitchen under their latest plan to generate green electricity.

Instead of throwing out scraps, households would be required to store them separately for at least a week until they are collected by recycling teams.

The rules will oblige some homes to sort rubbish into five containers – or potentially risk fines. Some councils already insist on separating glass, metal, paper and nonrecyclable refuse.

David Miliband, the environment secretary, is expected to unveil the scheme this week as part of the government’s waste strategy. Food accounts for about a fifth of domestic waste and releases greenhouse gases when dumped in landfill.

Now local authorities are set to be given the power to introduce schemes whereby methane generated by decomposing food will instead be trapped and used to generate electricity.

The proposal is part of a wider shake-up of Britain’s waste collection. The government also plans to give councils the power to introduce “pay per throw” charges, levied according to the weight of rubbish. Households would not be charged for recycled waste.

During the recent council elections there was a backlash in some areas against the scrapping of weekly collections. Fortnightly collections were blamed for causing infestations of vermin.

However, advocates of recycled kitchen waste insist that sealed containers will provide a hygienic solution. The idea was inspired by the government’s waste body, Wrap, which found that homes across Britain waste a total of 3.3m tons of food a year.

He is also likely to outline a plan for giant incinerators to burn more than 20% of rubbish that cannot be recycled. This too would be used to generate energy.

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