Recycling Roundup 23rd April

Recycling Roundup 23^rd April

The city of Ipswich in Queensland, Australia is sending all its recycling to landfill because it’s becoming too costly. The council say that since China banned waste imports, recycling is becoming too contaminated to process efficiently.

The mayor said that this was happening across Australia and that all councils would soon have to address the issue.

Critics say that the council has failed to speak to recycling industry representatives about alternative solutions and say that the decision is a disaster for the environment. They have called on the national government to come up with a solution.

For recycling to continue, the amount of pizza boxes, food waste, plastic bags, and nappies that get put in recycling bins would have to be halved. Otherwise, there’s just too much contamination. The council say that they are looking into various solutions such as energy from waste systems.

A pensioner has been left with overflowing bins due to changes in bin collections in Dundee. Thousands of residents across the city are having to take their glass waste to a designated site instead of putting it in their burgundy bin as usual. Their blue bins, which were previously used to deposit paper, cardboard, cans, and plastic are now to be used for paper and cardboard only.

The pensioner has now been left with 2 blue bins full of cardboard, aluminium, and plastic, which might not be collected until May. He contacted the council and was told that he was not the only one who had fallen foul of having full bins to deal with in the transition between the old recycling scheme and the new one.

Cambridgeshire's recycling rates have plummeted since 2015, according to figures released recently. Even though there has been more investment in ‘green’ initiatives, less household waste has been recycled year on year. The amount of waste recycled has declined from just over 51% in 2015-16 to just over 46% in 2017-18

The recycling service in Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire is managed by the city council and South Cambridgeshire District Council under the Greater Cambridge Shared Waste scheme. They say they are investing in encouraging people to recycle more and are currently running a ‘Metal Matters’ campaign. The metal packaging industry is funding the campaign to increase the amount of metal that is recycled overall. The council say they are making an effort to encourage people to recycle more, but also to put the right type of waste in the recycling so that the quality of the materials they recycle is better too.

The council are also investing in new collection vehicles and developing innovative recycling collection services, such as the underground waste collection service that is currently operating at the NorthWest Cambridge development.

They’ve recently introduced an optional second blue recycling bin for residents, for a one-off payment of £25 in a bid to increase recycling rates.

The decline in Cambridge’s recycling rates comes at a time when local authority recycling budgets across the UK have been cut by 10%.