Magherafelt to crack down on its non recycling residents

The council, which serves 14,000 households, is stepping up its recycling service to provide an organic waste service for 10,500 homes and is planning to extend its in-vessel composting plant.

” We will be more actively looking out for contamination as we extend the service and will definitely reject bins if needed “
– John Murtagh, Magherafelt council
All households receive an alternate weekly collection of waste and dry recyclables and up until now, just over half have also had a kitchen and green waste collection. This is about to be extended to include an extra 3,000 households and if an extension to the existing compost site is granted, the organics collection will also include meat waste.

Stick approach

John Murtagh, the Northern Ireland council’s environmental officer, said: “It’s important that our residents use the bins correctly if we want to meet our recycling targets. They are generally responsive to recycling, but we will use a part stick approach to those who don’t use the recycling service.

“We have stickers to put on the bins with tick boxes to indicate to residents what they have put in their black bin which should have gone in the recycling or compost bin instead.”

He said that while most residents had used the waste and recycling service correctly on the whole so far, there had been some incidents of contamination.

Activ Active

Mr Murtagh added: “We will be more actively looking out for contamination as we extend the service and will definitely reject bins if needed. We want people to make the most of the extra capacity for food waste. We have a recycling rate of 35% and a big part of that is food.”

He said there was a big realisation in Northern Ireland that a three bin type of system was needed to meet recycling targets. “This system and being strict with what we take in the bins is pivotal to meeting our Landfill Allowance targets too,” he added.

The council is now waiting for confirmation from its composting company VCU on when the extension to its 5,000tpa in-vessel facility will be extended to 8,000tpa to take the material from its extra food waste collections.