East Cambridgeshire and TEEP a response

The authoritys document stated that it would not be technically, environmentally and economically practicable (TEEP) to implement separate kerbside collections across the borough and it had finished rolling out its new commingled dry recycling service (see letsrecycle.com story).

And, the district noted that newspapers collected were sent for reprocessing in the UK at Aylesford Newsprint in Kent.

Now, Ian Broxup, managing director of Aylesford Newsprint has responded to the article, raising concerns about collecting glass with paper, and we publish this in full below.

Separate collections of paper and glass, a response by Ian Broxup of Aylesford Newsprint:

The letsrecycle.com article on 24 December 2013 on the commingled collection system introduced by East Cambridgeshire highlights the importance of applying the TEEP (technically, environmentally and economically practicable) test intelligently.

In his letter to local authorities, Lord de Mauley emphasises the need to have collection systems which provide high quality recyclate and meet the TEEP criteria. He is quite clearly applying these requirements to the overall process from collection of the recyclate to its arrival at the relevant reprocessor. In addition, he specifically highlights the need to separate glass from paper at the point of collection.

For operational reasons, the paper being generated by the East Cambridgeshire scheme has not been received directly at this mill and so indeed no loads from East Cambridgeshire have been rejected by us. Other schemes which collect glass together with paper regularly have loads rejected by us for glass contamination.

As Lord de Mauley recognised, the problem with glass is that it gradually destroys the machinery used to re-process the paper, and the only way to avoid this is to collect glass separately. Collecting paper and glass together is akin to vandalism: once combined, the two streams cannot be fully separated and the damage to re-processing machinery will be done.

It is in everyones interest to ensure that material collected for recycling is of at least adequate quality and that it reaches the reprocessor in the most efficient way possible. We have a long way to go!