Wiltshire finds POPs’ costs 2.5 times higher than landfill

In a report the authority notes that since December 2022, around 130 tonnes per month of waste upholstered domestic seating were collected separately at household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) or through bulky household waste collections, while some were disposed of through fly-tipping and subsequently incinerated.

The expenses associated with these separate collections, transfers, and disposal of the waste, particularly Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) waste, surpassed the cost of landfill by more than 2.5 times. This has resulted in an “unforeseen budgetary strain for the year 2022/23”. And, the government has determined that these additional costs should not be covered by new burdens funding, the council said.

The landfilling of waste upholstered domestic seating was banned last year, with enforcement action stepped up in 2023. This means items such as sofas and bean bag seats must now be incinerated.

Recycling

Elsewhere in the report, the council said its recycling rate in 2022/23 has dropped by 2.5%. The authority put this decrease down to several key factors.

One significant factor was the occurrence of two droughts during the summer of 2022, which led to a substantial decrease in garden waste collection and management. Overall, garden waste fell by 14% (5,500 tonnes) compared to the previous year, resulting in a negative impact of -1.54% on the recycling rate.

Another contributing factor was the declining performance of the materials recycling facility (MRF) responsible for processing Wiltshire’s kerbside-collected recyclables.

The report explains that in 2022/23, an additional 1,650 tonnes of material were rejected by the facility for disposal. While 450 tonnes of this rejection can be attributed to increased contamination, a significant portion of 1,200 tonnes constituted “target recyclables that the MRF was unable to capture”. The reduction in recycling rate due to the rejected target material amounted to -0.56%.

Wiltshire council has a long-standing agreement with Hills.

Tonnages

During the same period, there was a noticeable reduction in the tonnage of waste and recycling collected at the kerbside, says the report issued on 25 July.
This decline in collection was likely influenced by reduced consumption resulting from the current “cost of living crisis” experienced by residents, Wiltshire said.

Additionally, suppliers and retailers adopted “lightweighting” practices for packaging materials, leading to a further drop in collected dry recycling by 6% (3,000 tonnes). In contrast, residual waste only experienced a 3% reduction (3,000 tonnes), resulting in an overall negative impact on the recycling rate of -0.28%.

EfW

The report also examines the energy from waste performance.

The council has a 25-year contract, which runs to November 2038, to send 60,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste to Northacre Resource Recovery Centre (NRRC) in Westbury, Wiltshire with Hills.

Most of Wiltshire’s non-recyclable residual waste collected at the kerbside is sent to facilities that use the waste to generate energy or process the waste into a fuel for use in other energy from waste plants. Typically, only residual waste from the household recycling centres and household large items separately collected at the kerbside are sent to landfill, as these are considered unsuitable for the landfill diversion contracts.

The council also reports it will continue to review the feasibility of constructing small scale energy from waste plants within Wiltshire.

Courtesy: letsrecycle.com