Berryman sorting plant “hardly an endorsement of MRFs”

The campaign, launched in March 2007, believes it is a mistake for local authorities to collect different materials together prior to sorting into separate material streams later on in the chain (see letsrecycle.com story).

But, it has insisted the move by a leading reprocessor member of the campaign to develop a sorting plant to process commingled material does not go against the campaign's message.

Despite the campaign's central argument that commingled collections and MRFs generate lower quality recyclable material, it said Berryman's decision to sort commingled cans, plastics and glass from January (see letsrecycle.com story) is “hardly an endorsement of MRFs”. 

In fact, campaign coordinator Andy Moore said the move was “simply an indictment of commingling as a collection method, both in environmental and financial terms”.

Mr Moore explained: “We can understand why reprocessors looking for quality feedstock may need to undertake pre-sorting if they are having to accept commingled tonnage. They have got to get their tonnage of quality material up because they have got to satisfy customers. It's what they have to do to stay in business. Glass manufacturers have told us they almost never use the material coming from MRFs because it's never up to the right quality standard.”

Berryman

Specific details have not been released by the Yorkshire-based glass collection specialists, but Berryman insists it is not building a MRF and that the quality of sorted material from its plant will be much higher than that from existing MRFs.

Mick Keogh, general manager of Berryman Glass, said: “This is an expedient move on our part to satisfy the requirements of our customers within the glass industry. What we really want is quality feedstock, preferably source-separated material. That's why we're members of the Campaign for Real Recycling, which we wholeheartedly support.”

Other glass collectors supplying the container industry have also moved into the sorting of commingled materials in recent years, responding to trends in local authority collection and the need to diversify recycling activities.

Mr Moore said that most glass collected in mixed collections by local authorities is used in road fill and that companies needing material to make new glass bottles and jars were missing out. He claimed any move by reprocessors to process commingled material would mean an extra expense.

He said: “Front-end technology to clean incoming materials will no doubt incur extra costs to reprocessors and ultimately to consumers and householders.”

Bryson

Berryman is not the first Campaign for Real Recycling member to use sorting technology to process material collected in commingled form. Bryson Recycling, part of the social enterprise organisation ECT Group, runs a MRF in Mallusk, Northern Ireland, which handles around 40,000 tonnes of material a year.

Bryson holds waste management and recycling contracts with councils in the region, and Mr Moore explained that its MRF facility had been built at their request. Bryson now provides both commingled and source separated collections for local authorities in the Belfast area, which Mr Moore said was a good basis for comparison between the two systems.

Carrickfergus has been held up as an example of Bryson's source-separated system, which along with fortnightly residual collections has led to big jumps in the local recycling rate. Bryson has said the scheme outstripped performances of its commingled collections, who were also on fortnightly collections, by 30% (see letsrecycle.com story).

Mr Moore said: “This clear evidence debunks the myth that collecting commingled means diverting higher tonnage and faster. The same social enterprise is undertaking all the collections and running the MRF so this is about as close as we can get to an exactly comparable situation.”

For more on the issue of recycling quality, see this week's letsrecycle.com opinion column, by Martin Green of UPM Shotton.