John CRAWFORD He’s old school and we’re proud of it


PR soundbites send out the wrong message to confused punters who want simple facts


OUR December story about a two-week survey in Birmingham where they found ‘almost half of bin waste is food- related’ intrigued me. My fi rst thought was this is just another PR stunt to get us focussed on food waste.


I had a rant about this trend in June 2015, wondering if I was the only one out of step with the notion food waste was the next target to help improve recycling performances. I certainly wasn’t wrong.


The resident culinary expert (not me!) in our household was quite adamant: “We don’t waste much food, but if you add up the food packaging and count that as ‘food-related’, this could be around half of our weekly waste.”


And here’s my biggest problem with our article: the Council’s spokesperson launched into a diatribe about ‘a food mountain that doesn’t need to exist…… there’s no reason to throw perfectly good food into our bins….’


But actually Ms Spokesperson, your mountain doesn’t really exist - because I don’t know anybody who could survive on a diet of the cardboard sleeves and the fi lm and plastic trays in which most of our pre-prepared food and veg comes.


My other beef is PR soundbites like this send out the wrong messages to punters. Last February, my local paper reported that Fylde Borough Council had decreed we’d to stop putting food waste into our garden waste bins, and place this in residual waste bins.


Lancashire County Council (our Disposal


Authority) said it was costing too much to compost garden waste, if it contained food waste. It was claimed it would save money if food waste was simply chucked out with residual waste.


The Council stated that: ‘food waste is only 1% of the recyclate collected by the Councils’. And they should know, shouldn’t they?


There’s been an ongoing problem over the years with so-called ‘waste experts’ cherry- picking statistics drawn from small sample numbers, and extrapolating the data to promote their own particular cause.


Whenever I see a PR story about some ‘new initiative,’ I hold my breath.


A few years ago I bandied words with Eric Pickles MP (now Knighted) when he helped set up a fund of £420million to persuade Councils to stop fortnightly residual waste collections, and return to a weekly service.


As far as I know all the money was spent, but few (if any) Councils actually re- introduced a weekly collection service.


Although his staff were adamant ‘there was a lot of survey-based data’ supporting his strategy, I dug around a bit and found in every study his staff quoted to me, the householders wanting to return to weekly collections were a very small minority.


So whenever I see a PR story about some ‘new initiative,’ I usually hold my breath.


I also read last November that following a report ‘more than 10 homeless people have died during the last fi ve years after...... seeking shelter in containers...,’ three UK waste fi rms ‘have met for the fi rst time and committed to work together in order to help save lives through increased education and co-operation.’


I wondered if anybody had told them this problem had been around for decades, or that Skip Hire Magazine’s ‘Whack-a-bin’ campaign had been on the shortlist for a CIWM Award in 2015?


At the same time HSE reported ‘six fatalities to workers in the waste sector in 2015/16 alone, meaning 30 waste worker fatalities in the past fi ve years...’


Yet there was no comment from waste industry representatives. Surely where lives are involved, it would be best to concentrate on the areas where the biggest inroads could be made?


All the best for 2017!


John trained in municipal engineering in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd (now Wimpey Waste Management Ltd). He then joined the Civil Engineering Dept at Strathclyde University, before posts at Renfrew, Hamilton, Inverness and East Ayrshire Councils.


A Fellow of CIWM, who served on its Scottish Centre Council from 1988-2009. He is a Fellow of the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland and was their President between 1991-92.


62


SHM February, 2017


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