Agenda item

The Portfolio Holder for Environment introduced Mr Mike Cowdell of the Somerset Waste Partnership.

Mr Cowdell provided a comprehensive presentation of the current and future work of the Somerset Waste Partnership, which included information on:-

•       They were the first county wide waste partnership in the Country

•       They had a history of innovation including the collection and recycling of food waste, and, they now had an End Use Register to show where the waste went.

•       They had achieved efficiency savings of over £1.5m per annum through rationalising services, £225k through a single client team creation and £942k in avoided future costs.

•       Consistently over 90% of what was collect for recycling stayed in the UK (because of the high quality kerbside sort)

•       They currently had a recycling rate of 52.4%

•       They had been independently ranked as a carbon reduction ‘high flyer’ every year since 2012 (top 10%)

•       They would be moving away from landfill as a method of disposal in April 2020 when the energy from waste plant went live at Avonmouth.

•       There were 16 Recycling Centres across Somerset which accepted all plastic pots, tubs and trays not currently collected by the kerbside recycling

•       The Recycle More scheme had been agreed by all partners and would bring environmental improvements and £2m+ cost savings.  It was also hoped that it would change peoples behaviour towards waste as a resource.

•       Subject to finalisation of funding, there would be a wider food waste campaign across Somerset and in schools in the Autumn to recycle food waste  This would be to drive behaviour change ahead of the Recycle More scheme starting to be rolled out in June 2020.

•       It was expected that Recycle More would increase food recycling by 20%, increase dry recycling by 30% and reduce the residual waste by 15%

•       An additional 60 litre weighted bag would be provided to households for the additional plastic to be collected as the transition to 3 weekly residual waste collections was made.

•       The new waste collection contract with Suez involved new technology which should help reduce the missed collection rate and there were strong penalties for contract failure.

•       Through the Waste and Resources consultations, it was hoped that plastic producers would make their packaging easily recyclable in the future.

In response to questions from Members, Mr Cowdell responded:-

·         Currently, the plastic bottles collected under the kerbside recycling were of a high grade and the reason why high value but mixed plastic was not collected was because existing contractors did not have the fleet or processing plant required to collect or process.  Also mixed plastics was of a lower grade and consequently had a lower value and the pricing mechanism in the contract had been changed to account for this.

·         All the Household Waste Recycling sites (HWRC’s) were open all weekend (9.00am to 4.00pm) year round and until 6.00pm on weekdays in the summer.  The HWRC sites were valued and there were no plans to close any of them.

·         The Partnership did have a clinical waste collection service and the change to 3 weekly residual collection would not change the clinical waste service.

·         The Partnership were involved in the consultation surrounding the deposit return scheme with DEFRA.

·         The Waste Partnership were working with District Council Partners to ensure new developments consider waste and to better embed it into the planning process.  They also offered guidance to developers and were forging links with big developers.

·         The Recycle More trial at Wiveliscombe had been very successful but they had worked very hard on the education of residents prior to roll-out.

·         The costs of transfer and treatment of residual waste at the Avonmouth site was marginally cheaper than landfill gate fee and landfill tax.

·         Currently, the garden waste collection service was operated fortnightly by Kier and this would remain fortnightly under the new contract arrangements with Suez however new routes would likely be used.

·         He would seek a response to Cllr Sue Osborne’s question relating to residents concerns at Higher Clanville, Castle Cary about the safety of the access at Dimmer.  Had these issues been resolved?

·         The Partnership were not the first to be changing to 3 weekly residual waste collections and a lot of lessons had been learnt from other areas.  The key was education, consultation and guidance. 

·         The Partnership were evaluating new technology to reduce their carbon footprint including the use of electric vehicles in the future as technology improved.

At the conclusion of the debate, the Chairman thanked Mr Cowdell for attending and providing an informative presentation and answering Members questions on the work of the Somerset Waste Partnership.