The council has issued a consultation document entitled “Our Waste: Our Challenge: A way forward for Cheshire” which hopes to improve the way the county deals with its waste. Following the distribution of the document to all residents, it is now running a series of public meetings to try and minimise the amount of waste produced in the county and increase recycling. The consultation follows an independent report by AEA Technology which looked at the area's waste problem.
In 2000/01 Cheshire achieved a recycling rate of 15% but to meet the government targets of 22% by 2003/4 and 33% by 2005/6 the council said: “We have no option but to change the way we deal with waste in Cheshire.” And the council has warned that failure to meet recycling targets could mean cuts to grants which would impact on other services.
Waste collection and disposal in Cheshire currently costs each household on average 89 a year. The council says that a recycling-led approach would increase costs over the next 10 years by an average of 16 per household. But these costs would be higher if recycling cannot be increased.
The council's assessment showed that staying with the current waste collection and disposal methods would be the worst and most expensive option. And the council called on residents to play their part and said: “Most importantly we need you to take action to reduce the amount of waste and support recycling by recycling.”
Recovery
The council looked at various ways to meet the targets and said that elements which include energy from waste performed well as they achieve government waste recovery targets. The council also said the greater the amount of energy from waste the lower the cost of achieving the targets and the more recycling the greater the cost.
The council concluded that the best overall option, which achieves all targets, combines high levels of recycling and composting with some energy from waste. But it added: “If we do not achieve high levels of recycling and composting we will have to have energy from waste.”
Over the next four years, the council plans to give most households three containers for the collection of recyclable materials, garden waste and residual waste from the kerbside on an alternate weekly basis. It will also develop more sites where garden waste can be composted and significantly improve household waste recycling centres.
The partners in the consultation include: Chester City Council, Congleton Borough Council, Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council, Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council, Macclesfield Borough Council and Vale Royal Borough Council.
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