Consultation on new Waste Management Strategy
A session as part of the consultation on a new waste management strategy to shape how the Council collects and manages household waste and recycling. The item will include a short presentation, interactive voting to feed into the consultation and time for Q&A.
Minutes:
Martin Litherland (Head of Waste Management) and Vicki Harris (Principal Waste Services Officer) gave a presentation on the waste management strategy for the next 10 years.
An update was given on the refurbishment of the recycling centres in Warminster. It was noted that a new contractor would be taking over the management of the centre on the 2 October 2017, which provided an opportunity to look at the layout and how the centre is used.
The Warminster centre and a number around the county would be refurbished with a change of layout and for that to take place the site would need to close for two weeks beginning the 11 October and reopen on the 20 October. During that period of closure alternative sites would be available and more information could be found on the councils website.
Questions were asked about green waste bin accessibility being dangerous and the current issues caused by the popularity of those bins.
It was noted that the refurbishment would involve placing several of the popular bins in different locations on the site to allow better movement through the site and reducing backlog. Accessibility to the current green waste bin on the site would not be changed during this refurbishment as the feedback was too late but the recommendations would be taken into consideration for future refurbishments.
It was agreed that Hills Waste should be thanked for their excellent service over the years in Warminster.
The key points of the presentation were:
· The need to develop a new strategy on how waste and recycling is collected and managed taking into consideration current challenges and major developments.
· Performance in figures - 700,00 bins from 215,000 houses were collected fortnightly; in 2016 243,000 tonnes of waste and recycling was managed by the council, a significant decrease since 2014/2015; residents produce 566kg of non recycled waste which most of that could be recycled; 44% of waste is recycled a reduction from 46.5% in 2014/2015 and the amount of waste sent to landfill has decreased from 78%in 2003 to 21% in 2016/17.
· The budget for waste and recycling in 2017/18 has been reduced to £31.88m, to cover meet this budget charges for non-household waste would be introduced at recycling centres and charges for collection services would include reasonable costs of collection
· A public consultation was taking place to ascertain the views of residents which will help develop the new strategy. The consultation deadline was the 14 November 2017
A number of questions were asked which focused on: fly tipping, provision for food waste, to explain what non-household items were and using good waste management examples such as Denmark.
It was responded that; fly tipping was being monitored to identify patterns – there had been an increase which was mostly commercial waste; due to the costs no provision was being made for food waste at this time and residents were encouraged to double wrap food waste to avoid maggots; Non-household items included DIY items; the Scandinavian countries waste and recycling strategies had been looked into, although their infrastructure and techniques were bigger than Wiltshire and part of the bigger agenda which was being pushed by the professionals.
It was noted that all of the mentioned points were included within the full consultation online and accessed here: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/rubbish-and-recycling
The Chairman thanked Martin and Vicky for their presentation.