May 6, 2020 by Josh Doherty 2

MRFs and recycling collections disrupted, survey finds

The number of councils reporting that recycling collections are ‘operating as normal’ has reduced by 5% in the latest survey results published by the Association of Directors of Environment, Planning and Transport (ADEPT).

The latest findings – from the week commencing the 27th April – show that 78% of responding councils in England are operating recycling services as normal, down from 83% the previous week.

Around a fifth (19%) of respondents reported moderate disruption and 3% said services have been withdrawn. This is up from 15% who reported some disruption last week and 1% which had withdrawn services completely.

Materials recycling facilities are being disrupted, according to the survey

And, a similar pattern has emerged for Materials Recycling Facilities (MRFs), which have seen a 7% reduction in those operating as normal, falling from 82% to 75%.

Residual

For residual collections, 88% of survey respondents state that residual collection services continue to operate as normal (down from 89% last week), 11% reported this week continued operations but with minor disruption, while 2% report moderate levels of disruption.

The survey is the fifth conducted by ADEPT, which is working with the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee the Local Government Association and the National Association of Waste Disposal Officers to monitor the continuing impacts of Covid-19 on waste services across England.

Collections

As outlined below, while there were fall in recycling collections continuing as normal, there were increases in garden, food, clinical and bulky waste collections compared with last week’s results.

Many garden waste collections were halted during the pandemic, as councils were faced with crew shortages.

While recycling collections saw a fall from last week’s results, garden bulky and clinical collections all reported a rise

Disposal

With regards to disposal services, there was a mixed bag of results in this week’s survey.

The number of energy from waste plants operating without disruption has risen by 1% t0 93%, and rises have been seen for Anaerobic Digestion plants and waste transfer stations.

However, there has been a 5% reduction to 75% in the number of MRFs not any reporting disruption. A further 12% are reported to be operating but with minor disruption, 8% with moderate disruption and 3%, unavailable.

The number of landfill operators reporting disruption also grew by 1%, in this week’s survey, but 93% continue to operate as normal.

HWRCs

A new question last week asked respondents if they have plans in place to reopen HWRCs. Roughly four in five (84%) who reported providing this service have plans in place to reopen some of their HWRCs.

“I want to thank our waste services teams for all their hard work in keeping our essential services running”

Ian Fielding, ADEPT

Regarding the anticipated time frame for this, 11% of respondents providing HWRC services suggested this would occur in the next week, 37%, within the next two weeks, 46% (the largest share), within the next month and 6%, in more than a month’s time.

Based on this, almost half of respondents have plans to reopen HWRCs in the next two weeks.

Ian Fielding, chair of ADEPT’s waste group, said: “Defra has published its updated guidance for HWRCs which is likely to see more sites open in the coming weeks, although Defra recognise that not all centres will be able to open at this stage because of the necessity for social distancing and minimising congestion.

“We will be closely monitoring this through our survey but it is clear that the safety of site operators and the general public must remain the overriding priority in this respect.

“I want to thank our waste services teams for all their hard work in keeping our essential services running.”