Memorandum by Cambridgeshire County Council
(RC 26)
Cambridgeshire County Council is a waste disposal
authority (WDA) and as such is responsible only for the disposal
of waste collected by our respective District Councils, which
are the waste collection authorities (WCAs). However, we work
very closely with our WCAs and any changes to refuse collection
regimes that improve waste reduction or recycling will impact
on our duties as a WDA.
1. THE WAYS
IN WHICH
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
COLLECT AND
MEASURE WASTE
Collection methods: the contribution made to waste
minimisation by the timing, frequency and type of collection in
both urban and rural areas
Cambridgeshire covers rural and urban areas,
and four out of our five Districts, covering both very rural and
city areas, have introduced alternate weekly collections (AWCs)
of recyclable materials and residual waste. Recyclable materials,
namely kitchen and garden waste, paper, cans, and glass and plastic
bottles, are collected one week, and remaining waste for landfill
is collected the following week. This collection regime has resulted
in a huge increase in the recycling rate across the county, to
the extent that Cambridgeshire had the highest recycling of all
county councils in England last financial year and the year before
that.
In addition all Districts with AWCs do not collect
"side waste", that is waste that does not fit into a
wheelie bin, and this has helped control the increase in residual
waste going to landfill. The fifth District is currently on black
sack collections and is running trial AWCs in 3 villages, but
this is a little more problematic than introducing AWCs with wheeled
bins.
Although there was some resistance amongst the
public to the introduction of AWCs at first, all residents were
given plenty of pre-publicity, information when the bins arrived
and follow up advice and information and now (18 months into AWCs)
there are virtually no problems.
It is our contention that the introduction of
AWCs with "no side waste" policies, is one of the most
important factors in increasing recycling rates and controlling
the growth of total waste and that if implemented across the whole
of the UK would contribute considerably to the country's ability
to meet the EU Landfill Directive targets.
2. THE CONTRIBUTION
COLLECTION METHODS
MAY MAKE
TOWARDS WASTE
MINIMISATION, EFFECTIVE
RECYCLING AND
THE REDUCTION
OF WASTE
GOING TO
LANDFILL
Information programmes: how the Department of
Communities and Local Government and local authorities can contribute
to reducing the amount of waste reaching collection through providing
information to households, consumers and producers
A considerable amount of effort both locally
and nationally has been put into promoting waste recycling, with
some considerable success. We now need to put more effort into
promoting waste reduction. This is a much harder concept to get
across to the public, consumers and businesses compared to recycling,
primarily because people do need to change their behaviour and
purchases greatly to recycle more waste.
In order to reduce waste, people will need to
buy less, buy different products, in particular those with less
packaging, and buy from different outlets; for example fruit and
vegetables bought from local markets or farmers markets have less
packaging than the same products bought from supermarkets, and
items bought from charity shops create much less waste than items
bought new from other shops; drinking tap water instead of buying
bottled water creates no waste at all. Other ways of helping to
reduce waste include finding ways of encouraging new parents to
use cotton nappies instead of disposable nappies (which are heavily
advertised in the media), encouraging shoppers to reuse carrier
bags on not take plastic carry out bags and discouraging junk
mail.
The County Council, in partnership with our
District Councils has set aside an annual budget to promote waste
recycling and reduction. In the past the larger part has been
spent on recycling promotions, but now the move is spend more
on waste reduction. Our recycling promotions have fitted in with
the national Recycle Now campaign (funded by WRAP), and has benefited
from this synergy. The same will be true if there was also a national
waste reduction campaign. The Council partnership is currently
developing a Waste Prevention Plan as part of its review of the
Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy.
We therefore strongly suggest that the Select
Committee recommend that DEFRA further fund WRAP to develop and
deliver a nation waste reduction campaign and that DEFRA develops
a national Waste Prevention Strategy.
3. HOW DECISIONS
TAKEN BY
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
ABOUT COLLECTION/DISPOSAL
METHODS AID
OR CONSTRAIN
FUTURE COLLECTION
METHODS AND
MINIMISATION
Planning for future sorting, collection and disposal
facilities
It is difficult to answer this question in a
realistic way. The decisions made by both collection and disposal
authorities have to be fairly long term, because substantial investment
in infrastructure, vehicles, bins, staff etc. is required. Investing
in bins for kerbside recycling collections, or new vehicles for
recycling services to the public and businesses or in new waste
treatment facilities is always likely to be tens of millions of
pounds, and thus once this investment has been made in a particular
treatment process or recycling scheme it has to operate for several
years, in order for the council or its contractor to recoup this
investment.
The County Council for example is about to let
a major waste treatment contract using MBT technology under the
Governments PFI programme. The contract will last for 28 years
and cost around £750 million and is complimentary to our
District Council's current refuse collection and kerbside recycling
methods. It will therefore be difficult for councils to change
to any great extent their refuse or recycling collections or waste
treatment methods during the life of this contract.
4. FINANCING
The funding of waste collection, including the
implications of variable charging for waste collection
Cambridgeshire County Council recognises that
the introduction of variable charging for waste collection was
one of the recommendations of the recent Lyon's Report into the
future of local government funding and its introduction in some
parts of Europe (eg. Flanders) has been shown to increase recycling
rates and help reduce waste growth. If managed carefully and waste
charges to the public are not made too high variable charging
does not necessarily lead to increases in fly-tipping.
It is the case that businesses have always faced
variable charging for waste collections. However, increased charges
has not always been an incentive to divert waste, particularly
amongst SMEs since these companies do not tend to produce large
amounts of waste and they have small staff numbers and so it is
difficult to allocate staff time and attention towards establish
recycling schemes etc. The benefits of small savings in waste
collection costs are often not out-weighed by increased staff
or process costs.
The recycling rate across Cambridgeshire has
already reached nearly 50%, comparable to some of the best performing
countries in Europe, and the introduction of the MBT processing
plant should allow the Council to divert at least 65% of waste
from landfill and possibly up to 90% could be diverted. The diversion
rate depends on outlets for the refuse derived fuel (RDF) and
markets and outlets for the compost like material that will both
be produced by the MBT plant. Outlets for this compost are restricted
by existing legislation.
Given that the Council is already achieving
50% recycling, and that higher diversion rates can be achieved
without variable charging, and the fact that waste charging could
be expensive to implement and run (eg. introducing bin weighing
and bin recognition systems, billing householders for waste, following
up non-payment etc), is likely to be unpopular with the public
and therefore politically sensitive to local politicians and may
lead to fly-tipping and neighbour disputes (residents putting
waste in neighbour's bins) the Council feels that further consideration
is required over this issue before a decision into the effectiveness
of variable charging can be made. The Council feels that the select
committee would do better to lobby DEFRA to relax the restrictions
on using good quality compost like material from MBT plants, and
see how this affects recycling and landfill diversion rates, and
how a national waste prevention campaign affects waste growth,
before spending a lot of time debating variable waste charging.
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