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Shropshire’s councils comfortably meet landfill targets
Wednesday 10th November 2010, 1:45PM GMT.
Shropshire’s two councils comfortably met stringent Government limits for the amount of waste being sent to landfill – despite developers putting forward controversial incinerators to deal with the county’s waste.
A new report by the Environment Agency on Landfill Allowances and Trading Scheme (LATS) for 2009/10, published this month, shows both Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council sent much less waste to landfill than they were allowed to.
Shropshire Council was nearly 20,000 tonnes below its allowance, while Telford & Wrekin Council was more than 3,000 tonnes under.
But Paul Beard, waste contracts manager with Shropshire Council, said: “The LATS figures quoted by the EA show the total amount of biodegradable municipal waste that Shropshire Council was allowed to send to landfill in 2009/10, before facing fines, and the amount of biodegradable waste that we actually sent to landfill that year.
“In 2009/10, 79,251 tonnes of Shropshire’s municipal waste was sent to landfill in total, but not all of this is biodegradable, and therefore isn’t included in the LATS figures.
“It is important that we pursue alternatives to disposal by landfill to ensure we meet these future allowances and avoid the fines that will be imposed if we exceed them.”
Councillor Adrian Lawrence, cabinet member for environment at Telford & Wrekin Council, said his authority was “pleased” residents’ efforts were continuing to increase recycling rates, avoiding any fines.
He said: “Our target for 2010/11 is 33,281 tonnes, which means that we have to landfill more than a 1,000 tonnes less than we did in 2009/10 in order to meet the target again. The good news is that our recycling rate is continuing to rise and our residents understand the need to landfill less and help the environment.”
Plans to build an incinerator in Telford were scrapped this summer. Bosses at Sita UK said they had no intention of appealing against the decision.
Veolia’s plans for a burner at Battlefield in Shrewsbury were rejected in September by Shropshire Council.
But the waste firm is yet to decide whether to appeal.
By Russell Roberts
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this is great news – surely we should all be celebrating – this must have saved the tax payer MILLIONS of pounds on both landfill cost and removing the need for construction of new facilities
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isnt this repeating last weeks story ?
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/11/01/shropshire-achieves-household-recycling-record/
shropshire is really good at recycling, ok we get it
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bit more context would be helpful here 20,000 out of how many tonnes ?? I looks like shropshire is doing much much better than telford here but is this really true or just the statistics ?? A little more explationation of what and how many tonnes of what is being sent to landfill
I agree though if (big if) those figures are true then this fatally undermines the business case for the harlescott incinerator
but you have to ask why ?? is it because the landfill sites have run out of space or just because of the cost or because more people are recycling (very few people on my street seem to bother)
anyway statistics are a funny old thing so dont beleive what you read in the press
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Where should we get our information from if, as you say, the press is unreliable, Daniel?
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Definately no neeed for the incinerator then!!
Bottom line is its unaffordable now anyway
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for years I was asking shrewsbury council to do plastics and they always said it wasnt economic or worthwhile, it wasnt a priority or they’d try to fob you off with excuses. Now they do plastics and hey presto, look at the results.
It shows they dont know what theyre talking about and they should listen to the people who pay there wages who do.
Look plastic is like atleast 50% of my bin so of course if they would improve the range of plastics they took there too that would be even less landfill too
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In fairness to Shrewsbury Council, maybe for years they were telling you the truth, but only recently has it become viable for them to accept plastics as new facilities have become available to them.
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to be fair to all, something like 75% of all the UKs plastic recycling takes place in China, so they’re both right, it can be recycled but just not easily, not in the UK and not cost effectively, despite massive public subsidies for recycling and taxes on disposal, its still cheaper to just bury it
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As the Yanks would say “nice job”
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surely this calls for an investigation, why in their waste strategy are the council insisting they need to burn it all if the figures show they clearly dont? could it be because they signed up to a contract with veolia which REQUIRES them to support incineration because its more profitable for veolia than recycling. in a time of public cuts i want to know why my council isnt do more to encourage recycling and rejecting the expensive and unpopular option of burning
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agreed.
it totally shows you can achieve all these targets with more recycling and that you dont have to go down the burning route at all
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well done to both councils for being ahead of the game I guess
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Well done, Shropshire Council!
Now please can we send food waste to anaerobic digestion facilities like the one in Ludlow.
This will produce useful bio-gas and bio-fertiliser, and ensure that our current unsustainable linear waste stream becomes a more ecological circular one.
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my understanding is that like with the US Clean Air Act, LATS is a market based scheme using tradable ‘permits’ to pollute, or in this case landfill, so they have a value, this means because of everyones efforts of recycling more, shropshire council must be sitting on a pretty packet. 20,000 tonnes, that could be literally hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of permits. perhaps this could be invested incentive schemes for residents or setting up more local community recycling schemes?
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personally i find the recycling system in shropshrie and telford is not good because its too fussy and complicated and if they give me another box i am going to strangle some one, where my aunt lives they have a wheely bin for recycling and you can put anything in, all plastics, tetra packs and everything, its much better system i cant beleive shropshire cant learn from others and improve things for the people who do all the work here the real recyclers not them its us
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totally agree why cant they make it convenient for people?
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What’s complicated about separating paper, metal, cardboard, plastic and glass into different containers?
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Think about it realistically – if you spend a couple of minutes just putting things into the different boxes (hardly technical) it means that the waste depot then doesn’t have to employ a team of staff to sort them out at the other end. Staff cost money and you’d soon moan if things like your council tax went up to cover this….
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all that money saved must be going some where then and all the money from the cans and scrap metal? is it helping fund schools and hopsitals or just profiteering for french multinational veolia?
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If there wasn’t money to be made, there would be no recycling industry. Either that, or the cost would be borne by an increase in your council tax.
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The key point is when the chap from the council says ” but not all of this is biodegradable, and therefore isn’t included ”
thats crucial to this whole system of EU targets and fines – plastic doesnt rot therefore it DOESNT COUNT – they only want you to recycle the biodegradable material because it is this material that causes problems in landfill
Frankly its a pointless waste of council taxpayers money to divert plastic from landfill to china, all that matters is the garden waste and paper and other BIODEGRADABLE WASTE, you can frankly landfill as much plastic as you like and it wont make the slightest bit of difference.
All the more reason why the Council’s recent decision to abandon a successful food waste collection scheme in Ludlow is frankly short sighted
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proof there is NO NEED for an incinerator in shrewsbury then!
The planning committee called it right on this one, there is no need which is fundamental for planning permission. Also it goes against the waste local plan.
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why are they trying to build an incinerator then? Are they stupid? There is no need for an incinerator in every town, the UK as a whole can achieve its targets through massive improvements in recycling and the existing incineration capacity alone is more than sufficient, if individual councils are struggling to comply they dont have to build an incinerator of their own they can share or buy permits off others, that is the whole point of a trading scheme to avoid the need for everyone to build an incinerator
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WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH LOL
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