Campaigners speak out as Council approves plans

Environmental groups in Brent slammed Brent Council’s waste strategy at Executive Committee last night, Monday 13^th December.

Brent Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Brent Campaign against Climate Change spoke out against the new system, which will cost £1.7 million for new wheelie bins.  They argued that this would lead to export of waste, loss of jobs, higher emissions, and that the consultation was highly misleading.  The Executive dismissed recommendations made by the Scrutiny Committee, who had called in the plans two weeks ago.  They voted through new proposals, without considering any of the comments made by two environmental campaigners who spoke last night.

Elaine Henderson, Brent FoE’s spokesperson on waste, who addressed the meeting,  said, “Whilst Brent are closing care homes and libraries, it is a complete waste of money for the Council to be spending a massive £1.7 million on new large wheelie bins, just to collect additional mixed plastics and tetra-packs.  We made some very reasonable suggestions, based on what other Councils are doing, that would not cost any more, but they clearly didn’t care.  The system we have now for collecting recycling is not only more cost-effective, but it is also better for local jobs and the environment.”

Viv Stein, spokesperson for Brent Campaign against Climate Change, who addressed the meeting, said, “Brent claim to be reducing their carbon emissions but this new system will actually increase them, and could mean that waste will be exported to China to be sorted by child labour on the cheap, or incinerated here.  What’s worse is that Brent Councillors seemed not in the slightest bit concerned about this.

“Camden Council did an energy audit of their commingled recycling collection, as Brent are proposing, when they switched from a kerbside-sorted method, as we have now, and found that their carbon emissions increased by seventy seven percent. They then changed to a twin-stream system, with paper collected separately, as Brent Friends of the Earth proposed, but this idea was dismissed by Brent.”

Following criticism that the waste consultation had not been explicit in explaining that rubbish would no longer be collected weekly, Elaine Henderson obtained a quote from the Plain English Campaign to review the clarity of the consultation - something the Council were recommended to do by the Scrutiny Committee.  The Council did not take up this offer, still claiming that the consultation was not misleading.

Viv Stein proposed that glass be collected separately as being crushed in the new system, this was likely to contaminate other materials, and that this was also better for emissions.  This suggestion was not even considered.

The Committee voted unanimously to pass the proposed plans, which will come into force in Summer 2011.

Brent FoE opposes the Waste Strategy for a number of reasons, including:

• Commingling leads to contamination by glass being crushed by the collection process itself.  The resultant waste is harder to separate, contaminating paper and other materials by up to 20% (WRAP study quoted in [5]), and is more likely to be exported for processing.
• Kerbside separation results in less contamination of recyclables and so a higher proportion of them can be recycled, with less sent to landfill or incineration, and   increased revenue from sale of materials.
• Compaction can make it impossible to recycle some materials, particularly aluminium, plastic and glass.
• Lower quality commingled recyclables are currently being bought by reprocessors in China, where child labour may be used and health and safety measures are not as stringent as in the UK. But in the future these processors will also demand higher quality materials, making Brent’s proposed changes a false economy.
• The consultation did not make clear that collections of non-recyclables would be changed from weekly to fortnightly.  This is open to challenge by the Local Government Ombudsman.
• In light of cuts to other services such as street cleansing, axing of the Green Zones project, care homes and six libraries, the £400,000 expenditure on funding free collection of bulky items – a political decision by the new administration - was not money well spent.
• Proposed £1.7 million cost of new large wheelie bins is not necessary if we stick with the existing system and increase education to up recycling rates.
• Whilst supporting Brent’s target to achieve 60% recycling, we do not believe this is in any way realistic given the proposed change to a commingled collection.  The UK Council with the highest recycling rate (Somerset Waste Partnership at 51%) uses kerbside sorting. 
• Brent should aim for a far greater cost saving in landfill charges rather than the proposed savings in the strategy.
• Kerbside separated systems have a lower overall impact on the climate than commingled systems.
• Staff separating materials at the kerbside can give immediate feedback to householders by leaving material which can’t be accepted for recycling, while still taking those materials which can be accepted.
• The total cost of collection and processing together are lower in source separated systems than in commingled systems.

Further information

[1] Brent FoE’s response to the Waste Consultation can be seen at http://brentfoe.com/node/86

[2]   Viv Stein’s speech is at http://wembleymatters.blogspot.com/2010/12/brent-council-executive-last-night.html

[3]    Camden Council’s Energy Audit is at http://www.realrecycling.org.uk/resources/files/env_and_carbon_benefits/Energy%20Audit%20of%20co-mingled%20-%20Camden%20Council.pdf

[4] http://www.wrap.org.uk/downloads/Choosing_the_right_recycling_collection_system.e3d85331.7179.pdf

[5]  FoE Briefing, Recycling Collections – Source Separated or Commingled? Sept. 2009 http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/recycling_collections.pdf