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

 

Bins on streets - Section 46 can help !

One of the most important waste related things we all need as residents is a successful waste disposal system that manages waste sustainably. A disposal system needs to be easy to understand and simple to take part in when we as residents are expected to recycle our waste - as we should do. We create the waste so it is only right that we dispose of it safely and correctly. The trouble is some of us either don't understand the process of waste disposal - recycling being a prime example or we don't want to take part at all - we just like to consume and dump, consume and dump day in day out.
If people don't understand the concept of recycling or simply don't care this can cause a number of issues. It can lead to bins being left unemptied if they contain items that should not be there. It can lead to lower value recyclate being gathered which may not impact on our council at first but long term can impact on values nationally and any falling price in recycling is a bad place to be because in the end that fall in prices finds its way back to the council via higher gate fees etc.

Where bins are left on streets - be it a contaminated recycling bin, an empty recycling bin or simply just a residual waste bin this situation drags a community down. A street full of bins degrades a community causing a blight by blocking pavements, attracting side waste and fly tipping, all aspects we don't want to experience as residents in our community. This is a very common issue in Derby in a number of wards including Normanton, Arboretum and Abbey to name just three. Sometimes residents have legitimate reasons for leaving bins on the streets such as lack of access to a rear garden. Sometimes the street is the only place for the bin in such cases but the council needs to confirm this is actually the case and not simply a lazy excuse. The council should also work to address access issues where possible - for example by clearing blocked alleyways or reviewing issues such as rights of access issues where a resident has blocked the ability of others to access properties from the rear by building fencing or planting hedging.
There is one government act known as the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which gives councils the power if they choose to make residents remove bins from the street outside set collection periods. Section 46 of the act which focuses on household waste collection gives councils the power to set out times when it is acceptable to place bins on the street and allows for action to be taken if bins are in place outside this period. For Some reason Derby City Council are not using that ability and so the streets of Normanton, Arboretum, Abbey, Mackworth and other wards are left with streets full of bins which leads to recycling bin contamination and fly tipping.
Is there a political will in Derby to use such powers or do those in power favour a cluttered street scene over making the electorate take responsibility for their waste disposal bins.

©SIMON BACON 2016



The decay of recycling in Derby

Recycling in Derby is under attack by the city council who are now wedded to a waste contract spanning decades to feed a waste incineration plant under construction. The plant will require them to procure waste of set tonnage, moisture, calorific and biomass values which is at odds with the requirement to meet recycling targets such as the 50% 2020 national figure or the councils shared target with Derbyshire County Council of 55%.  Having hit a high of 48% recycling in 2010/11 the council itself is predicting a fall to 33% if their recycling scheme does not improve.
The removal of the free garden and food waste recycling scheme played a large part in the sudden downfall of the recycling scheme. It's replacement with a £40 charge for a part year garden waste only service led to widespread rejection and a sudden fall in the recycling rate.
Not satisfied with that destruction applied to the councils recycling scheme in 2013 the council decided to target specific areas of the city to remove kerbside recycling while claiming this was due to contamination issues and the need to improve the street scene. Areas targeted were Arboretum, Normanton, Abbey and New Zealand (an area of Mackworth). What became clear was that the council was targeting specific streets - including my own in Normanton so it was time to start asking questions.
It soon became clear having made an FOI on the subject that the council had no evidence to back their targeting of specific streets such as my own as contamination is extracted at processing time.
FOI 4662 confirmed this
"Tonnage data at round/street level is not available for blue bins as contamination tonnages are assessed after processing. "
With that in mind I thought I might as well ask BIFFA the waste processor directly as they take in Derby blue bin material at their plant on Victory Road in Derby. Nobody is better placed to comment than the company that actually accepts the material so I spoke to Steve Norman Regional Operations Manager in September 2013 who answered with the following.

Q1 Does the Biffa MRF facility in Victory Road have the need to reject incoming loads delivered in by Derby City Council due to excessively contaminated material?

Answer: The site at Victory Road has not to date rejected loads delivered to it premises. On the whole the material received is of a good quality and contains very low levels of contamination.

In the end kerbside recycling was removed from Arboretum with the provision of a restricted number of bring sites - which regularly attract fly tipping.

 Recycling removal was reported here on Letsrecycle  http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/derby-to-trial-recycling-collections-removal/
Move on a year and a bit like groundhog day the council wheeled out a plan to remove recycling from restricted areas of the New Zealand area of Mackworth ward - claiming once again that bins were contaminated. A classic Derby City Council consultation took place where residents responded asking to keep the recycling service only for them to be ignored with 2 out of 3 local councillors those being Cllrs Pegg and Whitby concluding the kerbside recycling should be removed. The story was covered by the Derby Telegraph in October 2014 - currently the scheme has yet to be removed - http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/BINS-CONTROVERSY-Blue-recycling-bin-collections/story-23787235-detail/story.html
After the rather undemocratic situation in the New Zealand area of the Mackworth ward the city decided why bother asking residents at all and so promptly announced they were going to remove kerbside recycling services from more streets in Arboretum and extend this into areas of the Normanton which is an area of the city the local Neighbourhood Board decided they did not want kerbside recycling removed from. This situation was reported recently on the Resource website http://resource.co/article/derby-remove-recycling-bins-more-households-6952
By this point I had already made an FOI into blue bin contamination because I recognised it was best practice since my investigations had taken place a year earlier and things could have changed.
FOI 6346 was put in to the council in September 2014 the councils own FOI dept responded to my question shown below -

3- 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%.
 

It struck me that maybe I wasn't clear about the period I was interested in so I returned to the FOI dept for clarity which is shown below.

 

In relation to question 3 - rejected loads at the BIFFA site in error I referred to 2013/14 - what I had meant was 2013 / 2014 - ie 2013 and the year 2014 to date - please advise if the answer is any different."

 

Answer: No individual loads have ever been rejected, both in the old pre June 2013 arrangements or in the new current arrangements. All rejected materials have been and continue to be taken out as part of the sorting process.

 

So straight from the horses mouth we have statements from the council's own FOI dept that material IS NOT rejected by its sorting contractor because the process simply sorts the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

So where is the contaminated waste that causes the council so much horror that they remove swathes of kerbside recycling in the city?

The answer is who knows ! the council claim when bins are contaminated they are not collected by the council and are tagged. But where are all the tagged bins ? and if the councils own FOI dept says contamination is sorted out of the recyclate which backs up statements made by BIFFA are the councils just peddling a story to remove a service without actually having the evidence to back their claims.

Who are the losers ?

We all are as driving recycling backwards will lead to Derby missing government targets when it is clear that the technology in place addresses the issue of contamination. Removal of the kerbside service - which cost £10 per tonne in 2013/14 and replacing it with a disposal cost of circa £118 per tonne condemns Derby residents to paying a high premium to support the service removal - the council suggest this is £30,000. Finally the people who lose the most are the residents of the streets where recycling has been removed. Residents of Balaclava Road in Normanton for example will be expected to walk a round trip of almost 1,200 metres to a bring site on Havelock Road but even worse ! they cannot even do that as at the time this blog was written the new bring site had not even been installed !

 

©SIMON BACON 2016