This has been put down to a number of issues including stricter contracts in light of market conditions, general cost pressures, and reprocessors becoming “increasingly strict on the level of recycling contamination they will accept in recycling material.”
Local authorities to announce initiatives in recent weeks to crack down on residents putting the wrong thing in the wrong bin range from Newcastle to Hampshire and Renfrewshire to South London.
Measures range from communications campaigns to stickers on bins and letters to residents, with some councils going so far as to remove recycling bins from properties entirely for repeat offenders.
In a statement given to letsrecycle.com, Claire Shrewsbury, head of government and communities at WRAP, said: “Recent changes such as the contraction of overseas markets and the reduction in demand for waste paper have made it more difficult to find markets for recycling and to keep it economically viable. We provide advice and practical help in the form of online information, webinars, workshops and communication resources, through the WRAP website and the Recycle now Partners’ resource library.
“Through our work with Resource London, a cost of contamination toolkit has been developed to help local authorities better understand the financial implications of the problem.”
Newcastle
In Newcastle, the city council last week announced the results of a trial in the suburb of Kenton. There was a “marked improvement” in material quality after the council wrote letters and tagged bins to explain what mistake had been made.
“Most residents now understand what should be put in the blue bins and how to use the caddy for glass. This is a great achievement by the residents of Kenton”, the council remarked.
“Our recycling sorting contractor in Hartlepool [J&B] has commented on the noticeable improvement in the quality of recycling collected in this round.”
In South London meanwhile, a meeting of the South London Waste Partnership on 4 February revealed plans for further work to tackle contamination in 2020/21 in light of reprocessors becoming “increasingly strict on the level of recycling contamination they will accept in recycling material.”
Hampshire
In Hampshire, the county council is adopting a number of measures to tackle contamination including a digital behavioural insights campaign to educate residents and soon-to-be-launched road-style signs to educate residents on what they can and can’t recycle.
The council is also considering passing on the full cost of rejected loads to the district councils who are waste collection authorities, in proposals unveiled last year.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com this week, the authority said this was “still an option” and that it was discussing a way forward with the districts as part of a wider overhaul of how waste is managed in the county.
“In order to maintain quality we are having to work hard to pull material out”
Sam Horne, strategic manager for waste & resources at Hampshire county council, said: “We are trying to find a solution that improves performance and drives down contamination.
“Contamination is very expensive. We run just shy of around 20% contamination in our dry mixed recycling and the costs are well over £1 million a year and that is something we need to reduce as much as possible.”
Mr Horne explained that challenges in the export market were squeezing both material quality and price, particularly in the case of paper and that this was having a knock-on effect for the council and Veolia, the company responsible for marketing its dry recyclables.
“In order to maintain quality we are having to work hard to pull material out”, he said.
Scotland
North of the border, Renfrewshire council last month launched a campaign to tackle contamination in blue bins for paper and card and is refusing to collect ‘heavily contaminated’ bins.
“If bins are found to be heavily contaminated, then a red tag will be placed on the bin outlining that it will not be collected until the contaminating items are removed”, the council explained.
Contracts
The nature of a council’s contractual relationship with its materials recycling facility (MRF) plays a big part in influencing local authorities’ approach to contamination, according to Peter Jones, head of waste operations at the Eunomia consultancy.
And, he said these contracts were becoming stricter on the issue in light of market conditions.
“Some contracts have quite stiff financial penalties if they exceed a tolerated level of contamination”, he explained.
“MRFs are more likely to seek that sort of protection in contracts they agree now then they have been in the past, in part because it is more difficult to find reasonable prices for low quality plastics and paper than was formerly the case.
“Every kilo of contamination means spending more on disposal and receiving less in material income.”
Pressure
Mr Jones added that the need for quality was therefore getting “pushed back” onto local authorities.
“The pressure to produce better quality material is getting pushed back onto councils as new contracts are negotiated, and existing contract terms are enforced more vigorously”, he explained.
In the longer term, Mr Jones said that he expected councils would need to become stricter on contamination or could opt for collecting material in different streams to maintain quality.
“That’s partly driven by recent market trends, but also by calls for less recyclate to be exported and more to be reprocessed in the UK, the demands producers may have under the government’s extended producer responsibility proposals, and expected revisions to the way recycling tonnages are calculated that will make account more thoroughly for losses throughout the system”, he said.
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