Recycling audit proves need for change

At last the recycling audit I asked for back in 2006 has been published. It shows commingling has increased the amount of recycling collected, but, as I suspected, it’s not very environmentally friendly. That’s because, as I’ve said repeatedly over the last two years, we crush all our recycling up in the back of waste trucks and then spend huge amounts of energy trying to separate it at a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Greenwich. So, for example, our paper gets so contaminated with glass fragments that no British papermaker can turn it into recycled paper. As a result we pay for it to be shipped abroad where standards are lower or technology better.

The authors of the recycling audit suggested a way forward. About two-thirds of our recycling is paper and cardboard. If we collect this separately, then we can send it direct to paper reprocessors and earn money for it. Separating “fibres” (paper and cardboard) from “containers” (metal, plastic and glass) also makes it much easier to separate the “containers” later.

So I now think we should move to a system of four collections a week as follows: 1) “fibres” (paper and cardboard); 2) “containers” (Metal, plastic and glass); 3) food waste; 4) residual waste.

Many boroughs already collect food waste which makes up about one third of our rubbish. It could be used to make electricity or vehicle fuel and compost. It doesn’t have to smell if you add a product called bokashi to stop putrefaction. And if you take food waste out of the residual rubbish bags, then they will become less attractive to vermin.

Having more collections as I propose will mean more trucks on our streets, but this need not mean increased carbon or noxious emissions. We’re currently trialling biomethane made from food waste as a fuel in one of our waste trucks. Biomethane produces virtually no carbon or noxious emissions.

We also need to find ways to reduce the total amount of waste we produce. Part of the responsibility for this should lie with businesses which could reduce their packaging and stop using materials which local authorities can’t recycle. But they won’t do this without government legislation which seems unlikely.

The government has instead announced a series of “bin tax” pilots to try to find ways to charge residents that produce a lot of waste and offer rebates to those who recycle. This sounds good in principle, but I don’t believe it will work in Camden because most of us live in multiple occupation properties where bins can not be linked to households.

But there is one possible system we could try. We could take the cost of waste collection out of the council tax thereby reducing it for everyone. Then we could ask local shops to sell special bin bags which would cost enough to cover collection services. That would give residents an incentive to produce less waste. We would only pick up these special bin bags and we would use our fly-tipping powers to enforce abuse rigorously.

As Britain’s top council, and one which is seeking “to put sustainability at the heart of everything it does” this is exactly the sort of innovative and radical approach we should be seeking to pilot. And if the government is offering to fund trials like this, which it is, then so much the better.