Waste infrastructure in the Forest of Dean

[Ade Jones]

This is an issue that I feel that the group needs to consider. At present, the FoDDC collect around 36000 tonnes per annum at kerbside [municipal waste], and there are separate arrangements [through trade collection and private collection agreements] for the collection and disposal of a smaller but indeterminate amount of the similar commercial / industrial fraction [ie. 'municipal waste like' commercial and industrial waste.]

Waste arisings of these domestic and domestic-like waste streams within FoDDC are probably over 60000 tonnes/annum when combined [using experience obtained elsewhere ], although hard to quantify exactly as the reporting arrangements for the commercial fraction are less stringent than those for the domestic fraction.

Collection arrangements are varied, but around 7500 tonnes per annum (estimated - assuming that all of the collected garden waste is composted) of this tonnage goes for green waste composting at a site near Dymock, and around 3700 tonnes of municipal waste [2005 figures] is recycled as 'dry recyclates'.

In 2005, FoDDC landfilled around 24300 tonnes of MSW, predominantly at Hempsted.

There is only one Materials Recycling Facility serving the district [Oak Quarry], and a number of bring-banks. Current infrastructure for the recycling / disposal of commercial wastes within FoDDC is mixed, but is largely reliant on skip operators with inert landfill [ie. Reeds of Mitcheldean, Bendalls of Lydney], and some smaller community scale groups [ie. Fairtide Centre in Lydney who recycle paper/card/foil etc.]

There are plans for future commercial infrastructure [ie. Waste Electronic Equipment plant at Cinderford] but little developed yet.

What all this adds up to is that :-

Most of the waste generated in the Dean leaves the area.
The environmental impact of local waste disposal does not appear to have been modelled in any detail [ie. using a green waste composting site at one end of the Forest is worse than using a number of smaller sites, which in turn is worse than composting this material at source.]
Incentives to increase recycling rates beyond the current level [and FoDDC are a year ahead of their target, so all kudos to them - but in reality their figures are artificially inflated as they have first created a waste stream in terms of collecting garden waste and then created a solution - it is arguable that this waste stream should not be created in the first place...] appear to have stalled - they need to look now at options for segregated collection of organic wastes, for example - and at new technologies (for the Dean anyway!) such as Anaerobic Digestion.

What can we do as a group? Dialogue with the District and County Council would be a start. Applying pressure to increase the number of Materials Reclamation Facilities would also help.

Any thoughts?

[bella]

I think there is a small but growing consensus in the community sector that dealing with waste locally is important, and I personally would like to see "bring" sites in the major towns of the Forest dealing with some commercial waste together with extended options for domestic. I think also the new Council majority are concerned especially about the cost of collecting and carrying all the garden waste - the local press this week reported Venk Shenoi as saying there needed to be much more public education before going to a fortnightly collection. The proposed collection would have included kitchen waste but I don't know the details, and it was turned down or sent back to the drawing board.

The Council has adopted a zero waste strategy but little is known about what is meant by this in reality by the public, what it will entail and how we work towards it. Following on from work I did last year in the Forest on commercial waste, I'm now trying to take this forward at District and County levels by setting up a meeting with community groups involved in waste and trying to look at the best options for the Forest taking into consideration proposals and strategy from County and District levels. I'd be happy if you'd like to be involved in this and when it goes forward can report back to the Transitions group.

Hope this helps.

[Ade Jones]

I think there is a small but growing consensus in the community sector that dealing with waste locally is important, and I personally would like to see "bring" sites in the major towns of the Forest dealing with some commercial waste together with extended options for domestic. I think also the new Council majority are concerned especially about the cost of collecting and carrying all the garden waste - the local press this week reported Venk Shenoi as saying there needed to be much more public education before going to a fortnightly collection. The proposed collection would have included kitchen waste but I don't know the details, and it was turned down or sent back to the drawing board.

The Council has adopted a zero waste strategy but little is known about what is meant by this in reality by the public, what it will entail and how we work towards it. Following on from work I did last year in the Forest on commercial waste, I'm now trying to take this forward at District and County levels by setting up a meeting with community groups involved in waste and trying to look at the best options for the Forest taking into consideration proposals and strategy from County and District levels. I'd be happy if you'd like to be involved in this and when it goes forward can report back to the Transitions group.

Hope this helps.

Dealing with waste locally is important in an English perspective - over the border it's vital, because Wales has retained the 'proximity principle' which England dropped from its waste planning guidance. [That's the theory - in practice there's quite a bit of waste miles going on there too, but the overall aim is to reduce them.]

The idea of commercial bring sites is not a new one, but progress on this has been slow to date. The problem lies largely with the fact that local authorities have no legal duty to collect commercial waste (although most of them offer trade waste collections this is undertaken as an extra rather than as part of their core duties, and they charge accordingly), and both the English and Welsh strategies do not have set legal targets on the diversion of commercial wastes from landfill in the same way that they have for municipal waste. [Failing to meet the mandatory MSW targets for diversion and recycling rates = EU infraction fines. Failure to meet the aspirational targets set in relation to C&I wastes is not as much of an issue.]

There is indeed a role for the community sector - and recent work suggests that the community sector can indeed be more cost-effective than the more corporate approach to this problem - but any future waste infrastructure needs, by definition, to be a hybrid approach - we don't have the community sector present within the Forest to deal with most of our wastes, for example - and residual waste treatment is always going to be a problem that defaults to the business sector rather than the community sector unless you have a particularly strong community sector in place in an area.

I'd be happy to discuss this with you in detail if you like - it's my day job (although not in Gloucestershire!), so I'm conversant with the problems and opportunities. It's a confusing mess at the moment - and what I desperately don't want to see is the County Council imposing a Gloucester-centric solution for waste treatment/disposal, so all credit to FoDDC for rejecting their strategy earlier this week. Venk Shenoi wrote a letter to the Review this week about the Strategy, and I rang him for a chat tonight, and we had an interesting discussion about the issues. I think he'd be a useful advocate within the District Council if we wanted to take this further.

Drop me an email on ade.jones@zen.co.uk if you want to have a chat about this.

[grabyskyh]

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