True story and random claim to fame: way back in 2002, I was tasked with introducing recycling bins into Rushcliffe. We weren’t the first to do this but I came up with the ‘alternate week collection’ tag to get us past the flak we took for ‘halving collections’…. Anyway - the plan was for three bins: garden stuff, food stuff and everything else - with a sack for paper, plastic.
Right at the death, the government intervened over the food bin. This wasn’t long after BSE - and they stopped us on the basis that there was a risk that they would result in a higher risk of BSE. So I asked for a breakdown of their logic. It went something like this: food waste gets dumped, a bird flies over and picks some up, bird drops it in field, cow eats it and YIKES! Everyone dies.
So I asked for their calculation of the risk: 14 million to 1 came back the actual, no I’m not making this up answer.
So we were stopped on a risk factor greater than winning the Lottery jackpot.
So I consoled myself by rigging the public consultation exercise about whether we should replace the dry recyclables sack with a proper bin. Apparently everyone wanted one, hurrah!
Fast forward 24 years, and that’s a lot of food waste, wasted. I still haven’t won the lottery.
It'll depend on the contract how it's managed. Generally, there is always a low-level of non-recyclable material in any load, so it's pulled out as part of the materials recovery facility processes.
If there's a particularly bad load, it could be downgraded (so it costs more to process) or might be unsalvageable and treated as waste.
The behaviours around recycling are fascinating. Some are cultural (so people just treat a recycling bin as another bin), some are behavioural (football fans using them as bins on the way out of a game) etc.
I would like to give you the local perspective from Milton Keynes.
The MK Waste Recovery Park mechanically sorts black bag waste using TOMRA optical sorters at 94% purity for plastics, extracts metals, separates organics for anaerobic digestion, and only gasifies the genuinely residual material. Landfill is down to about 3%. I think last year it might have been very near zero.
So my question is: what exactly is my blue bin achieving that the machines can't do better and faster? The case for kerbside separation assumes mechanical sorting doesn't exist at this quality. But it does — in my city, right now.
There's also a cost that never appears in any waste policy analysis: my time. The hours I spend each year rinsing tins, separating cardboard from film plastic, remembering which bin goes out which week — that time isn't free. If you costed household sorting time at even minimum wage across every household in the country, I suspect it would dwarf the commodity value of the marginally cleaner recyclate streams that manual sorting produces.
For cities with MK-level infrastructure, the optimal number of bins might actually be fewer, not more. Two — organics and everything else — with machines doing the rest. Bring on the future?
Agree! Automatic sorting would be great. It's not a full coverage across the country though. It's surprising how little there is in ways of standards, focussing on bins might not be the best metric vs percent recycled etc.
On the other hand, this is the local authority benefiting from free labour. If I am spending X minutes per week separating my rubbish, and the Council benefits to the tune of Y (either from selling the recycling or not incurring the cost of recycling it itself), where is the benefit Z?
I have mentioned this on this site before, but the Government (however defined) needs to be much better at advertising where public services come from - "The £100,000 used to regenerate this park came from you separating 100 tonnes of plastic. Thank you". Otherwise many bins are not good. They are just work.
Seperate at source is obviously best, but a walk down my street on bin day will show loads of items that shouldn't be in the blue bin. Does this completely screw everything up or is it expected and managed?
My council has recently upgraded from 5 to 6 bins; 4 of which are proper big wheelie bins. We have enough space and access to handle this but I dread to think how some houses will cope.
True story and random claim to fame: way back in 2002, I was tasked with introducing recycling bins into Rushcliffe. We weren’t the first to do this but I came up with the ‘alternate week collection’ tag to get us past the flak we took for ‘halving collections’…. Anyway - the plan was for three bins: garden stuff, food stuff and everything else - with a sack for paper, plastic.
Right at the death, the government intervened over the food bin. This wasn’t long after BSE - and they stopped us on the basis that there was a risk that they would result in a higher risk of BSE. So I asked for a breakdown of their logic. It went something like this: food waste gets dumped, a bird flies over and picks some up, bird drops it in field, cow eats it and YIKES! Everyone dies.
So I asked for their calculation of the risk: 14 million to 1 came back the actual, no I’m not making this up answer.
So we were stopped on a risk factor greater than winning the Lottery jackpot.
So I consoled myself by rigging the public consultation exercise about whether we should replace the dry recyclables sack with a proper bin. Apparently everyone wanted one, hurrah!
Fast forward 24 years, and that’s a lot of food waste, wasted. I still haven’t won the lottery.
It'll depend on the contract how it's managed. Generally, there is always a low-level of non-recyclable material in any load, so it's pulled out as part of the materials recovery facility processes.
If there's a particularly bad load, it could be downgraded (so it costs more to process) or might be unsalvageable and treated as waste.
The behaviours around recycling are fascinating. Some are cultural (so people just treat a recycling bin as another bin), some are behavioural (football fans using them as bins on the way out of a game) etc.
Thank you James and Liz. An interesting topic.
I would like to give you the local perspective from Milton Keynes.
The MK Waste Recovery Park mechanically sorts black bag waste using TOMRA optical sorters at 94% purity for plastics, extracts metals, separates organics for anaerobic digestion, and only gasifies the genuinely residual material. Landfill is down to about 3%. I think last year it might have been very near zero.
So my question is: what exactly is my blue bin achieving that the machines can't do better and faster? The case for kerbside separation assumes mechanical sorting doesn't exist at this quality. But it does — in my city, right now.
There's also a cost that never appears in any waste policy analysis: my time. The hours I spend each year rinsing tins, separating cardboard from film plastic, remembering which bin goes out which week — that time isn't free. If you costed household sorting time at even minimum wage across every household in the country, I suspect it would dwarf the commodity value of the marginally cleaner recyclate streams that manual sorting produces.
For cities with MK-level infrastructure, the optimal number of bins might actually be fewer, not more. Two — organics and everything else — with machines doing the rest. Bring on the future?
Agree! Automatic sorting would be great. It's not a full coverage across the country though. It's surprising how little there is in ways of standards, focussing on bins might not be the best metric vs percent recycled etc.
On the other hand, this is the local authority benefiting from free labour. If I am spending X minutes per week separating my rubbish, and the Council benefits to the tune of Y (either from selling the recycling or not incurring the cost of recycling it itself), where is the benefit Z?
I have mentioned this on this site before, but the Government (however defined) needs to be much better at advertising where public services come from - "The £100,000 used to regenerate this park came from you separating 100 tonnes of plastic. Thank you". Otherwise many bins are not good. They are just work.
Seperate at source is obviously best, but a walk down my street on bin day will show loads of items that shouldn't be in the blue bin. Does this completely screw everything up or is it expected and managed?
My council has recently upgraded from 5 to 6 bins; 4 of which are proper big wheelie bins. We have enough space and access to handle this but I dread to think how some houses will cope.
We've had seven bins/bags in Cirencester for a while