The two faces of recycling in Derby UK

The recycling rate for Derby UK in recent years has been pretty dire! since the removal of the free garden and food waste recycling scheme and its replacement with just a simple paid for garden waste scheme the recycling rate went into freefall! pushed on yet further by removal of recycling services completely in some areas of the city due to claims of bin contamination.

When the council caught on to the fact that residents were monitoring the recycling rate via council cabinet documents they promptly removed the data from the council cabinet score cards!

The council is to some degree pegging its hopes on a claimed 7-8% recycling rate at the controversial Sinfin, Derby incineration plant where rigid plastics and metals are to be extracted for recycling before the rest is burnt - but until that site is up and running that material is out of reach.

 

With Recycle Week on the way Derby City Council on social media are putting on a recycling face such as here on Facebook!

 

 

In a similar vein on Twitter they are also putting forward a green front

 

 

With Zero Waste week here the council is also promoting that on Twitter

 

 

Has the council had a road to Damascus change of heart regarding recycling or is it just a cynical ploy to make it look like recycling matters to them?

 

But what are the realities for some residents living in the city?

The council drive to recycle isn't always all it is cracked up to be!

Vast areas of the city had their blue bin recycling scheme removed when the council said residents were contaminating their recycling bins.

 The pitiful replacement bring sites the council has installed have simply become fly tip hotspots.

This site on Havelock Road in Normanton ward rapidly became a fly tip hot spot

 

 

So the council removed it - meaning residents totally lost their ability to recycle -
 NO ALTERNATIVE HAS BEEN PROVIDED.

 



 

On a similar theme at Grove Street in the Arboretum ward the council also installed a fly tip hot spot

and if the council doesn't empty the recycling site when full what message does it send to the public?

 

 

Some residents care enough to gather their plastics and even mark the bags as plastics in a vain hope that what they are taking to the recycling site will be successfully recycled.

 

 

Meanwhile over in Hampden Street, Normanton bin contamination led to rejected bins - but at no point in the six weeks that three blue bins sat festering on the street did the councils bin men tag the bins as contaminated!

 then all of a sudden the bin men emptied two of the bins even though they still contained the same level of contamination that must have led to their rejection.

 

 

So the social media front is of a council looking to promote recycling -

 something that they have not gone out of their way to do in recent times but out on the street residents who feel they have a right to recycle still suffer a 2nd class service with random bring sites that are then either removed or simply not maintained to a high standard.

In some cases residents do not even get a 2nd class service -

 

THEY GET NO SERVICE

 

 

©SIMON BACON 2017

A game of tag thats tag the recycling bin!

When it comes to waste disposal in Derby UK there can be nothing worse than going out to fetch your bin in only to find the green tag of doom attached to the lid!

 

 

 

This is the tag that the council binmen attach to your bin if you have done something wrong - you may have overfilled it or you may have made it to heavy or you may have put things in you shouldn't. Don't expect the bin man to mark what the issue is - you are expected to guess what the problem is.

 

Back in 2014 I published another blog post that focused on the proposal to remove kerbside collections from areas of the city due to claims of contamination which can be viewed here http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-decay-of-recycling-in-derby.html 

 

My blog has highlighted media coverage on the subject where kerbside collections were removed in areas such as Mackworth, Arboretum and Normanton wards of the city. The justification was that bins were contaminated leading to rejection of loads by Biffa the councils recycling provider. When I exposed that loads were not being rejected shortly afterwards Biffa conveniently started rejecting material.

Back in September 2014 my FOI request number 6346 showed that the contamination rate for the city was less than 6% at 5.8% and is shown below.

 

"How many loads of blue bin recyclables have been rejected by your contractor BIFFA at its Victory Road sorting facility in 2013/14

ANSWER: None, rejects are taken out during the sorting process. The average percentage of rejected material from the start of the new blue bin collection system on June 4^th 2013 to 31^st March 2014 was 5.8% "

NOW REMEMBER THAT PERCENTAGE - 5.8% CONTAMINATION FOR LATER !

     Where blue bin kerbside recycling was removed the replacement service - a restricted set of bring sites just became prime hot spots for fly tipping as shown below.

 

In recent weeks once again the council bin men in the Normanton ward of the city have been tagging bins in the streets. Some for lids being left up - where people try and recycle to much !

 

 

Others for questionable amounts of incorrect materials in the bins - or contamination to use the councils words. What the council misses is when tagging the bins they put that bin into limbo. The resident doesn't not know what they have done wrong because the council does not identify the actual issue but the council also will not empty the bin until the issue is addressed. What happens is we end up blighting communities with bins in limbo where the residents don't sort the issue and the council doesn't act. Is that really the way forward to improve recycling in the city - which has crashed to around 33%?

 





The council cabinet member when challenged on the extended tagging of bins in Normanton said that officers would look into it and empty those tagged in error but that they needed to maintain their stance on quality of material collected - siting recent load rejection by its contractor Biffa. I have not seen any bins being reviewed in this way.

So the council have removed kerbside blue bin collections from many streets in a number of communities to help reduce recycling contamination. Lets just remember that contamination rate for 2013/14 - 5.8% so what is it now ? remove the poor recyclers and surely that rate improves further.

 

ERRRR NO!

its now

16%

 

SO IT HAS INCREASED BY OVER 10%

This is confirmed in an email last week from the cabinet member for waste Councillor Asaf Afzal where he states

"Over the last 3 reporting quarters the average contamination was 16 per cent. "

 

CLEARLY THE COUNCIL DOES NOT HAVE A GRIP ON RECYCLING IN THE CITY.

 



 



©SIMON BACON 2016