JOHN CRAWFORD
JOHN trained at Saltcoats Burgh in the late 60s. After a decade he moved to PD Beatwaste Ltd/ 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, he served on their 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.
Sorting it out!
THE Government has now decided we need to move towards a more unified system of recyclate separation and storage.
It’s an admirable aspiration and perfectly understandable: in the last 20 years we’ve moved home a number of times and had a variety of blue, brown, green and charcoal wheeled bins for recyclate as well as boxes and hessian bags (many of these disappeared after being emptied on a very windy day), all in various colours.
The main driver for this policy seems to be that when people move to another council area, they don’t understand the arrangements for collecting their rubbish and recyclate. It’s argued that it’s all too complicated and many council websites aren’t sufficiently explicit – possibly because the designers haven’t ‘road- tested’ the site using a disinterested householder who doesn’t really know/ care what can/can’t be recycled...
But there’s another factor to consider: councils have made a lot of capital investment in providing recyclate bins
and boxes over the years (which reminds me that when we introduced wheeled bins in Scotland over three decades ago, we were guaranteed that these ‘would last at least seven years’: probably one of the biggest understatements of all time). So if there’s to be a general standardisation of recyclate collection and storage systems throughout the country, who is going to pick up the tab for replacing perfectly serviceable bins and boxes with new ones? Will the Government fund the additional costs that this new policy will attract? Will it make much difference?
We funded the new wheeled bin services with the savings we made by moving household waste collections from back doors to the kerbside, meaning collection crew sizes could be reduced. When the new recycling programmes were brought in, councils were given ring-fenced funding to pay for it, but that’s gone now. Councils can’t afford to replace serviceable bins on such a scale nowadays.
There’s an argument that councils should target ‘new’ residents who move
into their area but informal research in our block of apartments suggests the last thing that new residents read is our ‘Guidance on Waste Recycling and Storage’ that they are given and we usually go through a period of removing ‘contraries’ from our paper, glass and cans bins (never mind my hauling furniture out of our eurobins) before things settle down.
Setting aside the cost implications of standardising recycling arrangements for the UK, I’m not so sure it’s the sole cause of our mediocre performances. I think it’s too easy for people to moan “It’s too complicated and I didn’t understand how it works” when they’re caught stuffing non-recyclable waste into these bins.
I also smiled when I read the justification for introducing a Deposit Return Scheme in England and Wales is based on a response to a ‘consultation’ where some 85% of respondents supported the idea. But less than 209,000 responded (by my reckoning that’s around 0.3% of the UK population) so time alone will tell if it works. But that’s democracy for you!
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