Issue - meetings

The report considered by the Environmental Services Portfolio Holder at her meeting on 17 January 2012 is attached. The Portfolio Holder will provide a verbal update at this meeting.

Councillor Sue Ellington, Environmental Services Portfolio Holder, presented this report and invited the Committee to ask questions.

Target of 65% recycling

Councillor Ellington stated that she hoped that the Council would meet its 65% recycling rate by the end of 2012, but that the dry summer meant that there had been considerably less green waste collected and sent for composting. This was the case across the whole of Cambridgeshire. It was noted that the recycling rate up to the end of December 2011 was approximately 60%. The Environment Services Manager added that the 65% target was extremely challenging and that the drought conditions and the Council’s waste prevention efforts including the Love Food/Hate Waste campaign to reduce food waste, together with the national campaigns to reduce packaging all had a detrimental effect on the authority’s recycling rate. The challenge remained changing resident behaviour, in particular encouraging residents to put food waste in the green bin instead of the black bin. In response to the suggestion that the Council should consider refusing to collect black bins if they had food waste in them, Councillor Ellington said that the current system meant that food waste could be collected weekly, in the green bin one week and the black bin the next.

Contamination

Councillor Ellington explained that the Council had a rejection rate of less than 2% compared with over 8% in some neighbouring authorities and so contamination of recycling in the blue bin was not a big problem. The Council continued to inform its residents on which bin to use for recycling through the South Cambs News and judging from the extremely low contamination rate most residents knew which bin to use for recycling.

Income generation

Councillor Ellington stated that the introduction of the blue bin service had resulted in an overall saving of approximately £500,000 per annum when compared with the cost of the previous green box scheme. The Environment Operations Manager reported that whilst the Council had secured a very favourable fixed rate on paper recycling, the rates for other materials were reviewed and fixed every six months and could go down as well as up depending on the markets, which made predicting the precise figure for income generation very difficult.

Black bin collection

Councillor Ellington stated that residents had expressed a high satisfaction rate with the Council’s waste and recycling service and that there were no plans to go back to weekly black bin collections, despite the Government’s grant to do so. The Environment Operations Manager reported that this grant was unlikely to be sufficient and would only last for three years, which would leave the Council with a long-term funding gap.

In response to the suggestion that the Council should consider collecting black bins once every four weeks, Councillor Ellington stated that some residents would find that very difficult, especially those with small children. The Council currently had no plans to change its fortnightly black bin collection.

Collection from village rubbish bins

The Environment Operations Manager explained that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 47