A period of up to 15 minutes is allowed for members of the public to make a comment, ask questions or present petitions. Each member of the public has up to 3 minutes to do this. A councillor may also present a petition on behalf of a member of the public.
Minutes:
The Chairman confirmed that a member of the public had asked a question as detailed below:
Ms J. Tipper
Ms Tipper asked Councillor M. Sherrey, the Portfolio Holder for Environmental Services the following question:
Could you tell me what proportion of our recyclable waste is actually recycled, and where and how this is carried out, and what is the end product of these processes? Also, are there plans for a food waste collection?
Councillor Sherrey responded that all of the dry recycling that the Council collect from residents’ green bins was transported to a site just outside Worcester called Envirosort. This facility had been contracted by Worcestershire County Council (WCC) to mechanically sort the recyclables in order for them to be sold on into the recycling industry, to be either reprocessed into new materials, or used as a sustainable material in industry. All of the glass and tin cans were sold on to re-processors who then use it in the UK.
Most of the paper was bought by paper mills in the UK, with a proportion being sold to Europe, and a small amount was sent to Asia where it was also used to make new paper products.
There were a number of different plastics used in packaging, and once sorted at Envirecover, some of them may be further sorted at other facilities to ensure a high quality material, and then sold on to businesses in the UK, Europe and Asia.
There was an element of contamination in recycling bins, where people placed the wrong items in their bin, and this sometimes prevented some material from being processed in full, but this material was separated out and sent to an “energy from waste” facility called Envirecover in Hartlebury near Kidderminster, which burnt the residual waste from grey bins to generate electricity. After incineration, any recoverable metals are separated out and fed back into the recycling stream, and the ash produced is used in the aggregate industry as an inert material. The proportions vary, but approximately 10% of the dry recycling we collect was contaminated, and was processed this way.
The Garden Waste Service was only able to take garden waste, but this was sent to an open window composting facility near Pershore where it was turned into a soil improver that was available to buy for both commercial and domestic use.
As with the recycling collection, any contamination was separated out where possible, and this was then disposed of either to landfill at the nearby Hill & Moor site, or sent across to Envirecover at Hartlebury.
Worcestershire Authorities currently have no specific plans regarding food waste, but it is currently being discussed at a National level, as part of Central Government’s Waste & Resources Strategy, and may well be implemented through legislation along with additional funding to allow us to set up the appropriate treatment facilities, as the existing composting facilities were not allowed to take food waste due to Environmental Health legislation. There was an ongoing consultation throughout 2019 and the Council hoped to know later in the year what this might look like and possible timescales which were being considered.
The Chairman thanked Ms Tipper for her question and suggested that should she have any further questions she could contact Councillor Sherrey direct.