However, the trial will not start until summer 2016 at the earliest, as the South Wales authority is keen to make sure any changes to its collection service align as closely as possible with Welsh Government recommendations on collections.
Currently, the council’s in-house service sees glass bottles and jars collected each week from households via a purple bag alongside tins and plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays. In a separate red bag, cardboard, paper and drinks cartons are collected, while refuse is collected every fortnight.
But, a trial for 7,500-8,000 properties covering both urban and rural areas could see glass collected separately in boxes each week in addition to the two other bags of dry recyclables. It would require hiring a ‘split back’ collection vehicle to keep materials separated.
The ‘twin stream’ option would see glass extracted and sent directly to the market for further treatment, while other dry recyclables are sent to a materials recycling facility (MRF).
The trial would also see weekly food and garden waste collections split, with food waste treated through anaerobic digestion (AD) and garden waste separately sent for open windrow composting. The two are currently collected together and sent for in-vessel composting (IVC).
Councils in Scotland are currently being encouraged to move towards a single, unified system for recycling collections (see letsrecycle.com story) and the Monmouthshire report evaluates the Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) recommended system of separated glass collections as a possible model for its own trial.
Costs
“Glass can also be a problem within some MRFs as shards can disrupt the technology used by operators. Removing glass therefore will reduce operational MRF issues and this has a subsequent benefit of reducing potential gate fees.”
Report
Monmouthshire county council
According to a council committee report, extracting the glass “massively reduces MRF costs and removes the glass issues with commingled collections”, enabling the glass to be sent for remelt rather than to aggregate, which is “not as environmentally beneficial”.
And, as well as reducing operational MRF issues this “has a subsequent benefit of reducing potential gate fees” with initial quotes received by the council demonstrating that “as much as a 50% reduction on the current gate fee could be achieved”.
From this month, Suez takes over as Monmouthshire’s MRF contractor, and the council said the waste management and recycling firm would be fully engaged with the pilot to “evidence the quality of their end destinations for other materials”.
The council’s waste transfer station contractor Viridor would also be engaged to “understand transfer stations operational and cost implications”.
It is estimated that rolling out the trial changes permanently across the county could save the council around £270,000 a year excluding transfer station upgrade costs, but the council’s recycling review steering group will present a report to the cabinet in March before it is decided whether or not to proceed with the trial.
TEEP
Monmouthshire has been reviewing its recycling services in response to changes in UK and EA law and the Welsh Government’s preference for kerbside sort collections, and the council intends to work with contractors to “determine the level of compliance with requirement for ‘separate collections’”.
The council also said it will “work with NRW and WRAP through the pilot to evaluate the quality and end destinations of materials through SITA [Suez] to answer the necessity and if necessary the TEEP tests”.
The council’s end destinations are reportedly “comparable to kerbside sort authorities for a number of [dry recycling] materials” and the report states that its top three destinations for glass “are all closed loop manufacturers, and over 90% of glass went to these three manufacturers”.
It adds that although this evidence is “compelling” it is important that the council “has a full understanding of the quality of its recyclable material, before a full conclusion can be made on the necessity test”.
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