We now know exactly what works best to collect high quality material for recycling, with slight variations the template has been written about endlessly in recent years. Yet the industry stubbornly refuses to accept that thorough education of the population, adequate capacity for household recyclate storage and kerbside sorting of materials carried out by trained, personable crews on a weekly basis is the very simple and cost-effective way to collect materials carefully.
Mal Williams is the CEO of Cylch – Wales Community Recycling Network. He wrote Cleanstream- Total Resource Recovery Systems for Wales in 1998-1999 as a basis for the Community Recycling Sector's strategy in Wales. He is passionate about the social economy's role in community economic regeneration around re-use and recycling.Mal Williams
Fixation with the old ways, pessimism about the possibility of significant waste reduction, and a yearning to build and operate Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF's) that patently don't deliver high quality tonnage are leading waste companies and their local authority clients into a blind alley. We are about to witness the wasting of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money.
Who has the courage to call – STOP? To put faith in what every citizen has demonstrated they are prepared to do in places where they have been asked and provided for adequately. Who is going to actually look at the operations in the best performing areas and question the hundreds of billions of pounds being sought to pay for “waste treatment infrastructure” because Local Authorities are being panicked by the threat of infraction fines if they can't hit their targets? Who will avert this national disaster on a grand scale?
Much is made of the myth that people in different parts of the country and different parts of the world require very specially tailored services as far as collecting their waste or recyclate materials is concerned. We are forever being told that neighbouring boroughs are different – what utter nonsense. Strange that the universal dustbin/bag used to suffice – collected by the universal RCV compactor truck making the same universally recognisable noises. Efficient yes, destructive yes. Fit for purpose – yes.
In the days before waste to landfill was outlawed the “out of sight – out of mind” mentality suited everyone. The focus of all operations was to get the waste off the street and into the landfill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Householders were required very simply to remember which day to put out the black bag for collection. But that was the old careless way – Recycling requires a new paradigm in thinking, planning, designing and operating.
Respect
There will be differences between local areas of course. The density of housing, the occurrence of high rise apartments, the number of houses with gardens, pets, visitor numbers in tourist areas etc etc. But what is the same is that people respond more or less uniformly to requests for help in delivering a new service. Unsurprisingly, as with other change management situations, the key to success is “respect.”
Respect starts with giving people plenty of notice and plenty of information about what and why you are about to make changes – and lack of respect can cause everyone to turn against you, as many a Council has found.
So – just for the record – what elements of a recycling collection are the “One Size That Fits ALL.”
The basic principle that cannot be compromised is that when designing your recycling collection system you intend to make re-use, recycling and composting very easy for citizens, but wasting more awkward.
The qualities fall into essential and desirable – So
ESSENTIAL
• Consistent and well resourced information campaign to involve the residents. Plenty of notice of additional materials – use of graphical rather than wordy communications. Translated for ethnic minorities etc. Clear, concise instructions aimed at getting the resident to do the first and most important sort of all.
• Residents given adequate capacity of well designed, people or kitchen-friendly containers to store recyclate targeted for collection
• Weekly collection of recyclate – kerbside sort.
• Well designed vehicles with a demountable stillage for every material.
• All materials collected for re-use or recycling – preferably in one pass by one truck on one day.
• Maximum of two on the vehicle crew.
• Weekly (at least) collection of Food Waste essential.
• Kitchen Waste processed through an Anaerobic Digester sited as locally as possible.
• Garden Waste – a charged for service – to encourage home composting, wormeries etc
• Monitoring system in place to enable improvement.
DESIRABLE
• Vehicles powered from renewable sources
• One vehicle only – round size adjusted as more materials collected
• Commercial materials integrated into system fully.
• Same principles apply to bulky household contract
• Same principles apply to household recycling centre management.
• Social Enterprise to ensure maximum benefits transferred back to the residents as a legal priority.
• Leaflets/instructions translated into all known languages.
There will be other factors that will improve efficiency like the design of the trucks, their efficiency, fuel consumption etc and the training of the crews. All these factors need optimising but they merely need to evolve.
So we don't need to discuss this anymore, the evidence is in – surely.
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