Waste Management Award
sponsored by the Plant & Waste Recycling Show
Presented to the Local Authority that demonstrated an environmentally sound and cost effective waste management programme that reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill and provides a high level of service to residents.
Winner: Peterborough City Council
Peterborough City Council is responsible for both waste collection and waste disposal for around 75,000 households living in the urban centre and surrounding villages. It belongs to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough RECAP partnership.
Between 2007/08 and 2008/09 there was an alarming rise in contamination of ‘green bin’ commingled dry recyclables, leading to material being rejected and landfilled. This was especially evident in wards experiencing high tenancy ‘turnover’ among an estimated 20,000 migrant workers who had moved to Peterborough from the enlarged European Union.
In response, the Waste & Recycling team secured a Migration Impacts Fund grant to employ two, full-time bi-lingual community engagement officers to educate newly-arrived and other foreign-language speakers in the correct use of the three-bin alternate weekly refuse, recycling and composting collection service.
The team also produced a landlord information pack, including foreign language leaflets to explain the collection system to tenants. A four-week advertising and media relations campaign urged residents to ‘Keep it clean’ when using recycling bins. The team arranged for contaminated materials plus non-recyclables deposited at the Householders’ Recycling Centre (HRC) and street sweepings to be processed as ‘refuse derived fuel’ – recovering energy while avoiding landfill tax and gate-fee costs totalling around £60 per tonne (2009/10 prices).
Along with local charity Compass, the Council launched a six-month trial kerbside collection of textiles and other fabrics from 3,000 homes, promoting reuse and preventing contamination and the landfilling of these fabrics. It also reached a corporate social responsibility agreement with Coca-Cola for the provision of 81 new 'recycle-on-the-go' bins in high foot-fall areas plus two branded collection vehicles. Contamination levels have been reversed from a peak of 14.1 per cent to just six per cent by Christmas and efforts are continuing.
A new 4-day week waste and recycling collection service was introduced in November 2009. Employees now work 9.5 hour days from Tuesday to Friday which helps to provide a more consistent service for the local community that avoids changes to collection days as a result of Bank Holidays. Employees and trades unions were fully engaged and supported the change, and a complete revision of collection rounds has resulted in reduced mileage, fuel-consumption and carbon emissions.
All these measures supported the city council’s Integrated Waste 2020 Strategy, which seeks to raise recycling levels to 65 per cent and use non-recycled waste as fuel in a combined heat and power (CHP) energy-from-waste facility.
Commended:
Trafford Council
Norwich City Council
Gloucester City Council
Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead
