Reigate Liberal Democrats

Recycling as part of a Waste Strategy

Un-sorted domestic waste.

To save any confusion, lets just to get the correct historical facts out of the way now.

When the Liberal Democrat and Labour groups ran the Council we inherited a fairly static 6% recycling rate from established 'Bring To' sites.

We introduced kerb-side collections of waste and recycling, against vehement objections from some Conservative Councillors.

One said it was very unfair on his gardener, to force him to wheel the rubbish bin all the way down the drive to the kerb.

Another suggestion was that Squirrels would chew through the plastic bin to get at the rubbish inside.

Even the current leader of this Council promised to reinstate back door collection as soon as the Conservatives were back in control.

Nevertheless, in the 6 months following introduction of the black boxes, the recycling rate leapt from 6% to 19%. An increase of 300% in 6 months.

This Council has overseen further improvements between the mid Nineties and the mid Naughties

From 19% in '94/'95 to what looks likely to be a figure in the low 20's this year.

So what should we do? What do we need to do?

As a council we have responsibilities for the effective collection of domestic waste, and we do that well enough. We don't get that many complaints from residents about the collections.

But if you ask our residents, as the Liberal Democrats have done, they don't just want their rubbish taken away. By far the majority want something environmentally responsible done with it.

Government set targets for how we dispose of the waste from our residents. Quite rightly they don't want the limited land fill sites filled up prematurely and unnecessarily.

Strangely the Government sets targets measured by weight, whereas land fill sites are limited by volume and not at all by weight. We need to concentrate on tonnage to meet our government targets and volume to save the land fills. The best way to meet those targets is by focussing on the heavy recyclables.

What about Glass?

One of the heaviest and most easily reusable recyclable materials. One that we should be making more effort to collect - and yet our residents still have to take it to 'Bring To' sites. It's heavy, so they probably save it up and use the car for the journey, if they bother at all.

Composting and plastic have both been the subject of pilot studies, after a great deal of attention by local Liberal Democrats.

Composting has now taken off and is becoming quite successful, but what of plastic?

This doesn't contribute much to our tonnage targets, but large pop bottles do fill up holes in the ground very effectively.

Our Borough is surrounded by other local authorities that collect and recycle domestic plastic waste. So why don't we?

The Plastic recycling trial in the north of the Borough was a well noted success.

95% of those residents that took part said they wanted it to continue.

Since then - Nothing. Although I understand that there are plans to collect some plastic soon.

Unfortunately, we have to work with the Conservative County Council with a poor Waste Strategy and dodgy implementation. What they do, seriously affects what we are able to do.

The Conservative administration is still placing too much emphasis on incineration as a way of dealing with Surrey's waste.

Some of you may not know that Surrey is trying to rush through an application for a toxic waste recycling facility in Merstham.

If the County's existing levels of 'waste to landfill' continues in 2005/06, penalties of up to £6 million may be incurred, which will affect us all.

Potential problems with County's waste contract has meant that £17m of public money has had to be put aside in case the money has to be repaid to the government.

Because of this incompetence, Surrey's residents - you and I - will suffer, by either having to pay higher Council Tax or having to cope with even more cuts in services.

We as a local authority, have our own responsibilities.

We should be trying

i) to increase the level of understanding amongst residents with reference to the economic, environmental and social benefits of recycling,

ii)to educate residents about the materials that can be collected and recycled

iii) to motivate those residents who are not currently participating in the recycling scheme

iv) to encourage residents to put 100% of their recyclables out for collection

v) to monitor and measure the impact of the effort

We should do everything we can to encourage our residents to "Recycle more from their door"!