Council in green waste contamination appeal

Erewash borough council lodged an appeal to residents via the local press and its social media sites to ask them to ensure that they are aware of what can and can not be disposed of.The publicity cameafter it found that some garden waste collections contained almost 50% contamination when it resumed the service in March.

The council has also pledged to monitor the level of contamination in its green waste closely over the coming weeks and residents will be contacted if any contamination can be traced to individual addresses.

A spokeswoman for the council said: Residents are reminded every year when the service resumes by an information leaflet that is delivered to every household. It is also featured in our community magazine and we send out a press release to the local media. We also tweet the reminder and put it on our website.

We have appealed to residents to help us and work with us and have issued advice on what should and should not be placed in the brown bins. This has been done through a press release to local newspapers and, again, via Twitter and our website.

In addition, where we can identify households that have put out contaminated waste we are contacting those residents to highlight the issue and to try to ensure it doesnt happen again.

Contamination

The council, which has been running an in-house collection of green waste since 1998, says that contamination levels this year are among the worst it has ever had.

It is thought that the period of poor weather during the early part of the year may be partly to blame for the problems, with residents gardening less and using the bin to dispose of waste that they can not fit in their other recycling bins.

Erewash says that refuse collection team members have found bicycle tyres, plasterboard, frying pans, cardboard and personal mail items all dumped in the brown bins among garden waste, all of which has lead to an extra landfill cost of over 6,000.

And, since garden waste collections restarted in March, the council says that a high proportion of the brown bin waste currently being collected is contaminated with items that could be recycled at kerbside or taken to its household waste recycling centre in Ilkeston.

Green waste collected by the council is processed Stanton Recycling Ltd at its composting site in Ilkeston, where it produces PAS 100 compliant compost.

The Renewable Energy Association’s Organics Recycling Group (ORG) has been among the organisations cleaner green waste collections and last year called on the government to help cut the level of contamination found in green waste (see letsrecycle.com story).