Shropshire achieves household recycling record
Monday 1st November 2010, 9:41AM GMT.
Residents living in the Shropshire Council area have set a new record by recycling and composting 50 per cent of their household waste, new Government figures reveal today.
The figure for the 12 months ending in March this year, is well above the national average for England of 39.3 per cent, and up from the rate of 47.6 per cent in 2008/09.
The Shropshire rate has risen every year since 1998/99, when it was just 7.8 per cent.
One of the biggest jumps was between 2002 and 2004 when rates increased from 14.9 per cent to 23.3 per cent.
Today’s figures released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) also show that 2009/10 was the first time that residents in the Shropshire Council area recycled or composted more household waste than they sent to landfill.
In total 77, 359 tonnes of waste was sent for recycling or composting, an increase of 4,182 tonnes on the previous year.
At the same time the amount of household waste being sent to landfill fell by four per cent — or 3,211 tonnes — to 77,251 tonnes.
The figures also show that only five other counties in the UK now have a higher recycling rate than Shropshire, and that Shropshire is the best performing council in the West Midlands.
Mike Owen, council cabinet member for waste, hailed the achievement.
He said: “I’m delighted that our recycling and composting rate has risen once again, and that we have reached the significant 50 per cent milestone for the first time.
“This is a fantastic achievement and is due not only to the new recycling services and facilities that we are introducing across the county, but also to the efforts of people across the county who are making such good use of them.
“I would like to thank all residents for their efforts and encourage them to keep up the good work as we want to do even better in the future.”
Donald Macphail, managing director of Veolia Environmental Services – Shropshire Council’s waste contractor – said: “We continue to make investments and improvements to recycling in Shropshire, and I would urge all residents to make full use of the kerbside collection service which will help to further improve recycling rates in Shropshire.”
By Dave Morris
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its certainly come a long way – i remember when i were a lad we just had black sacks only and there were about 20 blokes hanging off a vehicle, now its all mechanised with bins and machines and obviously the new services like garden waste collection is excellent
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Most of it probably on a slow boat to China. The glass bottle you throw in does not come round again as a glass bottle and paper can only come round again as paper once before it loses it’s fibrous quality and has to be used for something else. Basically we’ve got to stop consuming as much as we do it’s as simple as that. A good place to start would be the supermarkets who need to start looking at true biodegradable packaging. But are we as a society prepared to pay for it? Anyway good headline but the elephant is still in the room.
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good news
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Aparrently, the recycleing operatives who have to load the boxes (not the wheelybins) are beginning to suffer R.S.I. from bending down and lifting the glass, paper etc. Most of us moan at having to do it once a fortmight. Think of doing it hundreds of times a day. Every day.
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with the number of extra boxes, bins and bags I have now (about 7 in all!) i am not suprised, i have nothing left for the black bin now except plastics
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If you can, you should find out whether you can recycle your plastics locally. I don’t know how variable the facilities are across Shropshire, but I’d have thought there should be some provision for it nearby.
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there is bugger all for plastic in shropshire its the massive obvious missing peice of the recycling jigsaw in bridgorth there is only one place to take plastic bottles, nothing for other plastic tubs and pots and bags and no collections at all, even though its half our waste, its rediculous
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Have you seen this, gary k?
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/07/20/plastic-added-to-shrewsbury-kerbside-recycling-scheme/
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yipee! well done all
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Any news on Telford & Wrekin? They’ve made excellent progress over the last 12 months in making it easier to recycle. They now collect paper, metal, cardboard, plastics, glass and small batteries through kerbside collection. Furthermore, plastics now include all types except hard plastics and black plastics, not just PET bottles as used to be the case.
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un like the pitiful effort made by bridgnorth (shropshire) council then
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I agree here is Telford we get a much better service and the council tax is better too
Thank god we are independant from Shropshire
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AND!!! some Telford residents are now doing a trial with a seperate kitchen caddy and bin for food waste which is collected weekly.
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Well done to Telford and Wrekin Council too, they certainly have made some real improvements to recycling in recent years
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well i feel like i should get some money back
shropshire council gets the accolades but we did all the work sorting it
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it makes you think…. the council really they do a pretty half hearted effort on recycling and get to 50%
they havent fully done a plastic service yet and they are planning to do food too so surely this is going to be at 60% recycling MINIMUM then, maybe the hippies who say 70% recycling is acheivable arent so mad after all? I mean other countries do it…
with that surely there will be so little rubbish left that they can never justify that incinerator in harlescott
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meanwhile on another planet far far away shropshire council waste bosses make plans to build a giant incinerator in shrewsbury at vast public expense which can burn 100,000 tonnes of rubbish every single year!
OMG! Are these people stupid or what!
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OMG! Are these people stupid or what!
Erm…nope, incineration is far preferable to landfill. Of course, none of us want it done on our back yard but much of the arguments against incineration are spurious to say the least.
We cant keep burying this stuff in our “back garden”.
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I agree that we can’t keep burying this stuff in our back garden, Tricky, but more of us could be recycling more or composting this stuff in our back garden, couldn’t we?
And as Mike Owen points out in the article, people across our county are making great efforts to RECYCLE MORE in an effort to cut down the amount that we bury in landfill.
‘Incineration vs landfill’ is a false dilemma, after all, isn’t it, Tricky?
As this story above and the unanimous rejection of the Battlefield incinerator ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/09/02/councillors-reject-shrewsbury-incinerator-plans/ )show, Shropshire people clearly want to recycle more and are not convinced -in the era of ‘zero waste’ aspirations- that burning waste is a healthy, ecological or forward-thinking way to deal with our detritus.
By the way, which arguments against the incinerator do you regard as ‘spurious’, and why?
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huw – incineration IS better than landfill, period, this is not by opinion its a fact as the Environment Agency, the Health Protection Agency, DEFRA, CIWM, royal academy of science etc etc,
also if you READ most zero waste strategies mean you use incineration, to achieve zero waste without some form of energy recovery is frankly preposterous, do you suppose you can recycle used sanitary towels or compost used nappies, would you discarded syringes found in the streets washed and re-used? do you propose rotten condemed meat from a butchers can be composted in your garden?? well yes you take my point now I hope OK, yes i support recycling and I’d love to see the UK get to 70% recycling but you have to ask what are we going to do with the rest and you might as well get some energy out of it
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Sean, do you think having an incinerator would ACCELERATE our progress towards 70% recycling, and the jobs associated with it, or completely UNDERMINE and/or REVERSE the efforts of Shropshire people, which are praised in this article?
Contrary to what you say, zero-waste strategies rule out incineration, as did the Shropshire Waste Plan, because burning waste will undermine our efforts to recycle it.
In addition, if energy is the decisive factor in choosing one option over another one, then recycling is preferable by far.
After all, recycling recovers at least 3 times more energy than incineration produces.
You mentioned the Royal Academy of Sciences and suggested that this institution was for incineration, albeit over landfill (which I earlier pointed out is a false dilemma).
However, in May 2004, when a pro-incinerator DEFRA report was hailed by the government minister Elliot Morley as paving the way for a new generation of incinerators, the Royal Society struck a much more sceptical note.
The Royal Society said this of the DEFRA report:
“It is important that anyone using the data takes adequate consideration of its inherent uncertainty”.
In view of the ‘inherent uncertainty’ associated with emissions from incinerators, would you incinerate used sanitary towels, used nappies, discarded syringes, and condemed meat near people’s houses, farmland or the Shrewsbury Food Enterprise Centre, Sean?
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Well I tell you something – they would recycle a lot more if they didnt leave my box behind for the slightest possible excuse
I always tip the bin men at christmas but not those recycling lot – they are just idle
The last time they left it I made them come back because the workshy council explained it was because i had a lid on my plastic bottle and they should have collected it
Apparently its some stupid safety rule – from brussels no doubt – still i take the lids off now
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mike owen says “I would like to thank all residents for their efforts and encourage them to keep up the good work as we want to do even better in the future.”
Too right – we do all the sorting!!!
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well done all
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look at the other story, green bin collections to be axed. Looks like you kiss all the kudos good bye then council.
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This is a good achievement. I remember when people said 50% was unacheivable or the maximum, now many UK councils are delivering on this target. What it shows is that Councils can realistically now start planning for levels of recycling around 65-75% which is on par with the germans and belgiums
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this is wonderful news, for some time now I have been increasing trying to reduce, reuse, recycle and get that message across to my husband, children and neighbours, well anyone who will listen. I may seem some what evangelical but I find recycling is almost addictive and therapeutic to some degree. I have once managed in a house with 5 of us to go 2 months without putting the bin out. That gave me great pleasure, I dont mind saying that and it is wonderful to hear this news. Long may it continue
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surely this is missing the point, whatever happens to it we are producing too much waste in the first place!!! Reporting the fact that 70,000 tonnes of the stuff was recycled like thats a good thing is insane, why is there 70,000 tonnes of stuff, wrappers, cans, bottles etc on all our stuff, we need to learn to live without so much packaging, sure recycling is better than landfill or incineration but really we need to stop consuming so much and stop shopping like a kid in a candy store
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Well i recycle much much more than half of all my waste so the question is who out there is dragging the average down by not recycling, they should be targeted by the council and fined if they wont co-operate
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so no doubt they made a fortune on the scrap metal then, where is my council tax rebate please? This must cover a few million of the cuts then atleast
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very welcome and positive news lets hope the momentum can be sustained and more improvements will be forthcoming
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i am not suprised, having just moved to shrewsbury it seems a very green community with beautiful buildings and surroundings and a vibrant green movement
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nice work
congrats to all involved, to be fair I dont say it often but looks like the council has actually done well (for a change)
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good job! No need for an incinerator now then!
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this sounds good but the other way to look at it is that there is still 77,000 tonnes of rubbish being thrown into landfill every year, that cannot be acceptable in this day and age to do that, surely we could recycle alot more of it, the council needs to get a grip and take a lead, they are cutting things but one area where surely they must realise you have to put more public investment in is into recycling facilities especially automated sorting plants which make it easier for more people to recycle more and encourage everyone to join in and also, yes also look at burning it too (so long as there is CHP heat recovery and electricity production then it is better than landfill) its not just about environment, its jobs and helping local businesses reduce their costs too, these facilities help the economy and must be a priority alongside investment in roads and rail if we are going to get out of this recession
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The decision to reject burning was unanimous in Shrewsbury ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/09/02/councillors-reject-shrewsbury-incinerator-plans/ ) and earlier in Telford ( http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/07/21/telford-incinerator-plans-scrapped/ ).
If you burn it, there is no incentive to reduce waste.
Would you not agree, ceri?
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Good news – I know that T&W Council certainly do a great job overall and their environmental department can tell you exactly where every bit of waste goes.
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still there is 50% left over
what should we do with left over rotting skanky residue???
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If the rotting residue is organic, Sean, wouldn’t it be best to send it to an anaerobic digester like the one in Ludlow?
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