Scrapping our values - or valuing our scrap?

Following on from yesterday's blog posting about the Allington incinerator and the rising price of recycled materials, I see from today's Times that abandoned cars are becoming a thing of the past. Rather than having to pay £50 for a scrap yard to take your car, many will give you £200, or even up to £1000 for your vehicle as the value of copper, aluminium and steel continues to rocket.

My colleague Paul Bettison, Chairman of the Environment Board at the Local Government Association says that five years ago local authorities were having to tow away up to eight hundred abandoned vehicles a day. Now, because of rocketing value of metals and other recyclable components, people know the value of their old wreck and councils collect less than 225.

Keep your fingers crossed for a sudden rise in the value of bin bags full of old newspapers and garden waste, bald car tyres and divans. Maybe then people would stop dumping them in our hedgerows and country lanes?

The Changing Face of Waste

A decade ago, a serious problem confronted Kent County Council. Regular recycling just didn't occur in many households, and the usual option for disposing of business and household waste was landfill. Kent's million and a half residents produce around eight hundred thousand tonnes of domestic waste each and every year, and with the cost of disposing of this huge volume sitting at over £50,000,000 it's a serious problem.

It was against this background that we made the decision to enter into a twenty five year contract with Kent Enviropower Limited to buy 320,000 tonnes a year of capacity at their new SWERF - Solid Waste to Energy Recycling Facility - at Allington Quarry in Maidstone.

The agreement looked set to provide a real solution to a large proportion of Kent's waste disposal problems. But alas, things are rarely that simple. You see, the Allington SWERF has been dogged by technical problems, and much of the waste we expected to be able to recycle through this facility has still ended up in landfill.

But the most unpredictable element is the price of recycled waste. In the decade since we agreed the Kent Enviropower (KEP) deal, the value of some elements of recycled waste has doubled - yet the KEP agreement doesn't allow us to share in the profits generated by selling on these products.

That's the changing face of waste - who could have predicted a decade ago that what seemed like a potential saving, would end up costing us money.

Mountains of carriers

I watched a news item tonight which explained how Government intended to induce supermarkets to phase out plastic carrier bags within a couple of years.

They were now concerned because consumers now appeared to be using more carrier bags, and they didn't know why.

Surely it's obvious? Since most Councils have switched to fortnightly rubbish collections, aren't most of us creating small mountains of knotted carrier bags between collections?

Can I now become a highly paid Government consultant?

The rise of the wheelie bin

In Tunbridge Wells, as in many other Council areas up and down the country, our dustbin was replaced by two ugly wheelie bins which were emptied half as often - once a fortnight. With me so far?

The reason for this was that Councils up and down the land could comply with yet another set of Government performance indicators around recycling. So residents who for years had composted their green waste now put it in a wheelie bin so that the Council could take it away and compost it for them - albeit adding hundreds of green miles in the process.

These wheelie bins mutliplied overnight - first a green one, then a brown one. The logic behind the colours was obvious - we put our our non-green waste in the green bin and our green waste in the non-green bin. Of course - simple. Could be worse. If you lived in Liverpool, your wheelie bin would be purple - then where would you be?

However, in Tunbridge Wells we should consider ourselves fortunate indeed. I see from the national press that some Councils are insisting on collecting refuse only from "standard" wheelie bins. Householders who do not have a "standard" wheelie bin are being charged up to £60 for one to be delivered.

The interesting thing is that householders who drive to their local Council's depot to collect the aforementioned "standard" wheelie bin themselves and thereby avoid the £60 charge are being turned away.

Mere taxpayers cannot be trusted to collect their own wheelie bin, under the Government's comprehensive Health and Safety legislation. Qualified Council staff must deliver these complex items of waste control technology - charging £60 for this highly technical mission.

This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that our Government have capped Council Tax rises at 5% leaving local authorities with less money and higher costs? Or would it?