Liverpool introduces street dirt recycling scheme

The council has teamed up with its street cleansing contractor, Enterprise-Liverpool (which will also be taking over the city's recycling collections in November 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story)), the Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority and local waste management and transport firm Widnes Skip & Reclaim Ltd to deliver the initiative for street waste and grit, which was launched four weeks ago.

And, despite the scheme's infancy, the city council has already reported that 500 tonnes of street dirt has been recycled, and councillor Berni Turner, Liverpool's executive member for the environment, welcomed its introduction.

“We're always looking at new and innovative ways to make Liverpool greener and as a result, increase our recycling rate by up to 4%,” she said.

“Its fantastic that this new scheme will allow us to not only divert so much waste from landfill but to also have a solution which benefits the environment,” she added.

Enterprise-Liverpool's team of street cleaners currently collect 8,000 tonnes of grit and litter from the city's streets a year using street sweeping machines, which until now has been sent to landfill.

However, under the new scheme, their collections are taken to a waste transfer station where they are tipped into skips for transportation to Widnes Skip & Reclaim's site at Ditton Road, Widnes.

Once there, materials are tipped onto the floor, before being put through a trommel screen where 60 to 70% of the waste comes out as silt and grit, biodegradable waste is also sorted by the trommel, and the remainder is then moved onto a conveyor belt.

A team of pickers then hand-pick materials such as cans, bottles and cardboard to be baled up and sent on for reprocessing, while the grit is mixed in with aggregates and green waste is shredded and stacked into windrows to produce low-grade compost.

Commenting on the achievements of the scheme in its first few weeks of operation, the council's recycling manager, John Wrigley, told letsrecycle.com that it had brought both positive recycling and financial results.

“There's been cost savings achieved, you can imagine the gate fee and landfill tax on the 8,000 tonnes this amounts to; and the gatefee we're paying to Widnes Skip & Reclaim is considerably cheaper,” he said.

He added: “We're getting high 80-90% of the grit we're able to recycle, but even if you were getting 50% it'd be very worth doing.”

Elements 

Mr Wrigley explained that the scheme was part of a wider effort to increase recycling rates in the city, and said that “it's about trying to capture all elements of it”.

In particular, he highlighted the “very successful” introduction of four sets of recycling nodes – containers allowing the segregation of waste – to Liverpool's streets which now had to be emptied twice a week.

As a result, he predicted a marked increase to the city's recycling rate for 2008-09. He said: “We were projecting around 25%, I think we'll comfortably get that this year,” and confirmed that the street grit recycling “will add up to 4% to the rate”.

Liverpool only achieved a 22% recycling and composting rate in 2006-07, and has experienced major problems with fly-tipping, with the city reporting nearly half of all cases reported nationally in 2006-07 (see letsrecycle.com story).

And, plans to boost the city's recycling rate were hit by Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority's (MWDA) decision to drop its plans to build a new recycling centre in the city after Liverpool city council objected to the proposals (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, as part of the MWDA, the city will be expected to increasing its recycling rate to 40% by 2020.