Project Integra in bid to cut waste production in Hampshire

Project Integra – which includes the county council as well as Hampshire's district and unitary authorities – has proposed moving away from the separate collection of food waste and adopting charges for green waste collections.

” Encouraging home composting of garden waste and digestion of kitchen scraps would have much lower carbon impacts than centralised collection systems. “
– Steve Read, Project Integra
This, it believes, will encourage householders to use home composters or food waste digesters to help cut down on the 850,000 tonnes of waste generated in Hampshire each year.

The proposal comes within the biggest review of Project Integra's long-term direction since the partnership's formation in 1994, currently underway.

Steve Read, Integra's executive officer, said: “Encouraging home composting of garden waste and digestion of kitchen scraps would have much lower carbon impacts than centralised collection systems.

“If you look behind the local authority league table statistics recently published by Defra, you will see that high so-called 'recycling' rates have, in many cases, been in large measure due to collecting high volumes of garden waste free of charge.

“Far from minimising waste, this often pushes up the total volume of material collected. Looking at true recycling rates, as opposed to composting, the best performing Hampshire authorities like Eastleigh and East Hampshire are achieving around 29% excluding composting. We aim to reach 50% overall recycling and composting by 2010 but, crucially, to arrest waste growth,” Mr Read said.

Strategy
Integra has just published its draft Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for public consultation, particularly targeting waste minimisation, residual waste treatment and a more joined-up approach between municipal and non-municipal waste management.

The strategy aims to cut waste growth to 1% per annum by 2010 and to 0.5% by 2020, and proposes recycling targets for all waste at a 50% rate by 2010, 55% by 2015 and 60% by 2015.

Project Integra has also said within its review it intends to look into new enforcement measures – penalties, rewards or a combination of both – to encourage waste minimisation and recycling by householders.

Businesses
As well as a stronger attitude towards minimising the generation of organic waste, the strategy highlights ambitions to extend recycling collections to all households and, “where appropriate”, commercial premises.

Developing the strategy in tandem with a review of land use planning under the county's new Minerals and Waste Development Framework, Integra wants to emphasise strong management of the whole waste stream – not just municipal waste.

Mr Read said: “It's crazy to try to manage waste streams completely separately when much of what’s thrown out by small businesses is similar in nature to household recyclate. We recognise the need to get smarter about joining the systems up and getting economies along the way.”

Residual
Elsewhere, the strategy looks at options to further decrease Hampshire's landfilling of residual waste. Despite a gleaming new network of incineration facilities, the county still sends 23% of its waste to landfill.

Without specifying particular options, the county seeks views on a range of residual waste treatment technologies that are new to the UK, including mechanical biological treatment, anaerobic digestion, gasification and pyrolysis.

“Our three existing energy recovery facilities (ERFs) are strongly supported by many stakeholders and further ERF options are a possibility,” said Mr Read. “But we need to make sure we are specifying the most suitable technology for the remaining 20% or so of material that is still landfilled at the moment. Much of this is residual waste derived from Hampshire’s Household Waste Recycling Centres (civic amenity sites) and it differs in composition from kerbside collected &#39b;lack bag' material.”