Recycling rate ‘pathetic’
COUNCIL SHOULD BE ‘ASHAMED’ AT EFFORTS ON WASTE
REDCAR and Cleveland Council has been told it should be “ashamed” at the extent to which residents are recycling.
Councillor Philip Thomson, who has previously criticised the council over its recycling efforts, said he could only describe the current rate of 38.1% of household waste being recycled as “pathetic”.
He said: “This authority should be ashamed of its performance.
“We are performing at a level lower than 12 years ago and it is not acceptable. With the top 10 [local councils] in the country, you are talking 60-odd per cent [recycling rate], we are nowhere near achieving that. One might say we are doing better than other authorities in the North East, but they should be equally ashamed, if not more so, of their performance. There’s a lot of work to do yet.”
A recent report by Councillor
Barry Hunt, the council’s cabinet member for neighbourhoods and housing, said the recycling rate – comprising dry recycling, such as cans and bottles, and other types such as anaerobic digestion of organic matter – had remained roughly the same over the past three years.
It said: “This reflects the national picture when recycling rates have remained flat as most councils have now introduced changes to waste collection frequencies.”
The Government’s Environment Bill is set to require separate food waste collections to be carried out
by local authorities, as well as more consistent collections of materials for recycling, and will also put added responsibilities on the producers of goods in terms of packaging.
Cllr Hunt’s report said “significant changes” to waste collection services and the disposal of waste were pending as a result of the planned new legislation. But there was concern about the deliverability of such changes with local authorities across England having to implement new services at the same time and having to procure new vehicles and receptacles when supply lines were already struggling.
The report said: “There is also a question as to whether there is sufficient capacity to cope with increased volumes of food waste that are expected to be collected, which may require additional waste recycling infrastructure that may take many years to develop.”
Redcar and Cleveland Council has offered residents wanting to recycle more free additional/larger recycling bins. Free compost bins have also been provided to encourage householders to make compost with the aim of reducing the amount of green waste that needs to be collected, transported and recycled.
Cllr Thomson, a former leader of the Conservative group on the authority who now leads the Cleveland Independents group, said the council still had a “vast tonnage of waste that needs to be disposed of”.
He said the desire was not to send waste to landfill, so the only option, bar exporting waste abroad, was to incinerate it. The council is a partner in a £300m energy recovery project being planned for the Teesworks site, near Redcar, which will treat household waste that can’t be recycled, and turn it into energy for the National Grid.
There has been criticism of the scheme from environmentalists, with assurances being given earlier this month that the impact on health from potential reduced air quality would be “negligible”.
Cllr Thomson said: “If the energy from waste facility is not put into commission what do we do with all the arising waste? And it’s not just from this authority it is from all the other authorities who have committed and contracted to this project.
“Regrettably, we have got to accept that this will be constructed, but do everything in our power to make the emissions as environmentally friendly as we can possibly make them.”