Staff training the key to efficient and economical recycling?

Government cutbacks. Public spending restrictions. Comprehensive spending reviews. If ever there has been a time when councils need to get more from less, it's now.

The trial shows that a small investment in training can lead to big efficiency gains – not to mention the environmental benefits

 
Ingunn Vallumroed, CO2Sense Yorkshire

So I'm pleased to report that CO2Sense Yorkshire has successfully completed a wood recycling trial that has resulted in big potential savings for two local councils, as well as ensuring the different grades of wood go to the most appropriate end markets.

Council civic amenity sites collect tonnes of waste wood every month. Often, the wood is sent for composting, but new legislation has restricted the types of wood that can be legally sorted, treated or composted. So there is a clear need to segregate waste wood into the different grades, to make sure that the waste can be used in the most productive way.

We conducted two trials with Leeds city council and the City of York council, to see if we could save them money and reduce the amount of wood waste going to landfill by improving the segregation of the different grades of waste wood.

Helping people to put the right wood in the right skip was the challenge, so we approached this from two directions: creating a training programme to help the site operatives recognise the different types of waste so that they could give the right help to members of the public, and designing new signs to help direct the public to the right skips. To avoid the issue of adding more skips to sites running at full capacity, we changed the configuration of existing skips.

Gate fees 

The result is a great success. At Leeds, wood is segregated into a wider range of grades with good accuracy. This has allowed us to find new markets for 75% of the council's waste wood, which as well as saving the council money due to cheaper gate fees, ensures the wood is reused several times.

The council saved a massive 30% on their wood waste disposal costs. The trial shows that a small investment in training can lead to big efficiency gains – not to mention the environmental benefits.

If you'd like to find out more, contact Ingunn.Vallumroed@co2sense.org.uk.