The City of Manchester is part of Greater Manchester where recycling rates overall have dropped to 9%. But recycling is set to improve as last year Greater Manchester Waste (GMW), which is owned and controlled by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, created a company called Greater Manchester Waste (Manchester Collections), as a joint initiative with Manchester City Council to improve efficiency and reduce costs of collecting waste and recyclables in the city.
GMW will now have a greater role in collecting Manchester's waste and increased co-operation between the collection and disposal authorities will result in a generally improved service. The venture should increase recovery and recycling of materials and enable the City of Manchester to meet government targets.
John Lea, head of technical services at Greater Manchester Waste, explained that the company is working with the city council as well as the individual districts on ways to increase recycling and is biding for more collection contracts including ones for green waste.
And to try and encourage more members of the public to recycle, last November, Sir John Harman, chairman of the Environment Agency, opened an education centre in Manchester to increase the public's awareness about recycling. The “Waste Experience” centre includes a 50-seat auditorium and an exhibition which includes hands on recycling experiments.
Animal By-Products
Mr Lea also explained how the city had been hit by the amended Animal By-Products Order which meant that green waste which could have been in contact with meat products or contaminants could not be spread on land.
Collected green waste accounted for a significant proportion of the city's recycling rate and the confusion over what could and could not be composted meant that large amounts of Manchester's green waste had to be landfilled.
Mr Lea said: “We increased the city's recycling rate to double figures, but this was brought down because we could not compost any of the organic factions as a result of the amended Animal By-Products Order. This meant that we had to landfill our collected organic waste.”
Mr Lea also explained the difficulties in calculating recycling figures because the tonnages of recycled material which are taken to civic amenity sites are included in the waste disposal authority's figures and not included in a district's total.
He said: “There are problems with collection and disposal targets. Because of the civic amenity sites we take less waste paper from the kerbside, but the civic amenity sites are controlled by the waste disposal authority and cannot be included in a district's recycling rate.”
Arnold Ellis, recycling officer for Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, reiterated this problem and added: “One of the problems is dual standards when calculating recycling rates and DEFRA says that recycling rates from civic amenity sites should not be included when calculating the district's figures. Do you calculate the DEFRA recycling rate or the actual recycling rate?”
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