Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
MONDAY 21 MAY 2007
MR STEPHEN
DIDSBURY, AND
MRS JUDITH
TURNER
Q20 Mr Olner: Why did those authorities
start it first? Was it to increase the amount of stuff they recycle
or was it their will to drive down the cost of collection?
Mrs Turner: The principal reason
was to meet legislation and minimise waste going to landfill and
raise recycling.
Q21 Anne Main: There has obviously
been a lot of speculation and I share concerns about rats, flies
and smells. You have mentioned doubling wrapping. I am assuming
it is something that is non-degradable because otherwise you would
have two weeks' worth of chicken carcase and a bit of fish head
ending up at the bottom of your bin by the end of the week—let
alone the end of a fortnight. How realistic is it going to be
that people are going to double wrap everything in plastic and
store it on a small premises and not experience any form of smells,
odours, flies and so on? And then what is going to happen to all
this double wrapped plastic chicken carcase at the end of it all?
What do you envisage happens to it?
Mrs Turner: The CIWM's position,
as you will have seen in the written evidence, is that they are
combining with other agencies to do some further research into
the health issues and it is not just the health issues for the
public it is also the collection crews. We are conscious that
we do need to get some more empirical evidence and we need to
do that during the summer to actually investigate those concerns.
Our view is that if it is properly managed alternate week collections
can deal with it but we do recognise that we do need some more
evidence.
Mr Didsbury: You can put food
waste in both the compostible scheme and the residual waste so
you could be putting food waste in one bin one week and in the
other bin the other week. It depends on which scheme and where
it is going to be re-processed and what its end market is. If
you are sending your food waste to somewhere which has animal
by-products approval compost can be made out of food waste and
therefore it can be collected weekly, as Harrow does.
Q22 Anne Main: Double-wrapped in
plastic.
Mr Didsbury: It would not be double
wrapped in plastic because it can be collected weekly. Or you
could be collecting one week in the compost bin and one week in
the residual waste bin. If it was going in the compost bin it
would be wrapped in a piece of paper or something like that. That
would be weekly collection effectively of the food waste.
Q23 Chair: Are you saying that some
food waste goes into compost and some goes into food waste?
Mr Didsbury: Depending on where
your product is going to be processed.
Q24 Chair: For an individual authority?
Mr Didsbury: There are some authorities
who do alternate week collections and their compost goes to an
animal by-products approved facility and therefore contains food
waste in the green waste bin one week and the other week it can
go into the brown bin. In the case of Harrow they can put it in
their brown bin every week because it is collected every week
and goes off to be composted.
Q25 Anne Main: Some people may have
some religious and cultural objections to having animal waste
in composting. Have you considered that at all? Some people might
be deeply unhappy that pig waste is used in composting goodness
knows where and growing what.
Mr Didsbury: It is the natural
process of things anyway. The waste degrades and it can be composted.
There are regulations which strictly govern how it should be done.
Q26 Martin Horwood: Is your view—given
the obvious environmental cost of double wrapping food in plastic
bags—that you would not really want people to go to alternate
weekly collections unless the council was actually collecting
food waste for recycling of some kind? Is that the Institution's
view?
Mr Didsbury: It is up to the local
authority to decide.
Q27 Martin Horwood: What is your
view?
Mr Didsbury: My personal view,
and not necessarily that of my authority, is that really you should
have an option for food waste to be collected on a weekly basis
either in one of the two bins or in a specialist bin.
Q28 Chair: What about disposable
nappies?
Mrs Turner: We were having a discussion
about disposable nappies earlier and we took into account as well
that people assume it is just children but we do have to recognise
that in that waste stream are incontinence pads and sanpro waste
and therefore we do have to give that some consideration. One
of the things in the CIWM's submission is that we would like to
start moving that debate and make it much more high profile in
terms of reusable nappies. They are not what they used to be,
there are many more options now. Obviously when you asked what
sort of support we would be looking for, that is an area within
the industry that we do want to put some focus on. There is evidence
to suggest it can vary percentage-wise from 1 to 4% of the waste
stream.
Q29 Chair: Is your proposal there
essentially to remove it from the waste stream by encouraging
re-use?
Mrs Turner: One option would be
to do that, yes.
Q30 Chair: For incontinence pads
and sanpro as well?
Mrs Turner: Yes. The Women's Environmental
Network have been high profile on this for some time but I do
think it is an area of the waste stream that does need some attention.
Q31 Anne Main: There has been significant
concern about when the waste is actually taken to landfill as
well in the bins there will be a proliferation of flies given
the gestational time it takes from the flies laying eggs, to being
maggots, to actually being full blown bluebottles. Do you have
any concerns about this? Is everything going to be solved by having
to double wrap everything or do you think this is an issue we
really need to be concerned about, the smells and flies?
Mrs Turner: At landfill?
Q32 Anne Main: Either. At the landfill
they are going to have far more flies around because the rubbish
will be reaching the landfill at a much more mature state and
rubbish on people's premises will also give rise to flies.
Mrs Turner: At landfill nothing
has really changed. It depends on the governance of the landfill,
how often the waste is moved and covered. There is no evidence
to suggest to the CIWM that that will cause any greater problem.
Most people operate their residual waste in wheeled bins with
the lid down.
Q33 David Wright: How many authorities
are operating with bag systems for residual waste, particularly
for food waste? This is a major concern. The authority in my area
does actually collect residual waste on a fortnightly basis, including
food waste, but it is in wheelie bins which is in a sealed in
environment if you deal with it properly. The problem is if you
have the bag system.
Mr Didsbury: There are very few
bag systems which do alternate weekly collections. Two do it on
an alternate weekly collection; the other 180 are using wheeled
bins.
Q34 David Wright: How much work have
you done on the associated costs linked to these types of schemes?
For example, we have heard about the design of certain estates
and on some estates in my patch the recycled material—paper,
card, et cetera—is collected on a fortnightly basis
and it is put into a central collection area. It then blows around
the estate and there are additional costs to the local authority
presumably of picking up that blown litter. Have you done any
estimates about additional costs on top of recycling systems?
Have you done any work on the savings that are made from alternate
weekly collection for recycled materials instead of people taking
stuff directly to skip sites because clearly there is a carbon
saving with people not taking material to skip sites? Have you
done any work on these associated costs: litter picking, carbon
reduction through transit, et cetera?
Mrs Turner: The only information
we have is from authorities who are already operating alternate
week collections and their evidence suggests that they have not
seen an increase in fly tipping or in litter production. When
you say you take the waste to central points, is it waste in bags
or in boxes and not in bins?
Q35 David Wright: Boxes.
Mrs Turner: Boxes without lids?
Q36 David Wright: Indeed, and that
is the problem. A lot of local authorities are running those types
of systems. It does not matter if you are not taking it to a central
point, clearly if you are putting a box out on the kerbside without
lids—which many authorities do—there are associated
costs with litter blowing around.
Mrs Turner: The only information
I have from the CIWM is that it has not proved to be a significant
problem in authorities operating alternate week collections. That
is not to say that it does not happen in certain situations.
Q37 David Wright: I am interested
in some of the hidden costs here. It is okay to put large scale
costings up about what the collection costs in a locality and
what the savings are, but I think there are a whole series of
hidden factors in here, whether it be about public health issues,
whether it be about additional collection required on street picking
after a collection takes place. I think there are a lot of hidden
costs that I would like to be able to drill down to.
Mrs Turner: I think one of the
most important points about alternate week collection is the method
of storage provided to people in terms of separating out their
waste. For a scheme to be successful it has to have the proper
storage facilities and therefore ideally wheeled bins or boxes
with lids or multiple boxes.
Anne Main: In an area like mine
that has different coloured bags to do their recycling on different
days, it is very difficult for an authority and they are going
to disadvantage someone whoever they choose to favour, unless
you have a very diverse set of litter collections which would
be totally confusing for everyone concerned.
Chair: The point was made that
this is not a universally applicable system.
Q38 Mr Betts: We talked earlier about
encouraging people to recycle and various means of doing that.
Sir Michael Lyons in his recent report on Local Government Finance
suggested that one form of encouragement authorities might be
able to use is charging people for waste collection instead of
paying for it through their council tax. Do you have a view on
that?
Mr Didsbury: The Institution's
view is that it is an option which local authorities should have
as an available power but not as a duty. There are both advantages
and disadvantages. One is making people more aware of the waste
they produce but there are significant administration problems
around how you go about the administration of the billing, the
debt collection? There would be a duplicate system in addition
to council tax. What do you do with somebody who has not paid?
Also if it is only in one area what do you do about waste vacations,
moving out of one area into the next door area because it is free
next door? There are quite a lot of questions and hurdles and
because of the high admin costs and because councils get a grant
as well as getting the council tax overall waste is a relatively
low proportion of the council tax bill. By the time you have added
the admin charges on it is very likely that you would end up paying
more just because the grant settlement is low and inflation has
gone up anyway. There are a lot of questions to be asked. The
Institution's view is that people should be given the option of
it because in many parts of the continent it is working very well
and it has produced very high diversion rates and waste reduction
rates.
Q39 Mr Betts: Is it really likely,
given the fairly small scale of sums involved (the estimate we
have been given is that it costs about £75 a year to collect
the waste from the average household) you would have to have some
pretty substantial reductions in the amount of waste collected
to make any saving at all.
Mr Didsbury: Are you just charging
for the collection or are you charging for collection and disposal?
Are you charging for recycling as well? There are a number of
different possible schemes and whether you do it by volume or
whether you do it on weight. It has worked in Belgium. You are
talking about £150 to £200 they have been charging and
there are significant reductions on those levels.
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