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Open Day Two Workshops
Notes from Workshop I
Bob Brooks, Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council
Barriers to Recycling
- Facilities (or lack of)
- Funding
- Costs of collection/disposal
- Merchants charges
- Nobody wants to pay for anything
- Whose responsibility?
- Understanding
- Education
- Throw away society
- Mixed messages
- Perception
- No simple solutions
- Service delivery
- Political
- Long term contracts
- Supermarkets & producers/packaging
- Recycle or recover
- Supply & demand
- buy recycled
- must be economically viable
- commercial & public demand
- Change of thinking
- eg real nappies - convenience
- deposit bottles - user friendly
- Perception that recycled products are inferior
- Word of mouth - social implications
- Government legislation
- Making it easy (ie doorstep collection)
Whose responsibility?
- Government
- Supermarkets/producers [lipservice]
- Householders (consumers)
- Local authorities
/WCAs & WDAs
- Businesses have to make a profit. Environmental issues are secondary.
- Achievable targets
- Are we (LAs) targeting resources to achieve targets, or to give best service?
- Moving the goalposts
- Long term strategies may need to be amended. Risks.
- Procurement
- Refer to David Dougherty’s ‘monopsony’. Why do
we collect the materials we currently collect?
Questions: Do you want to save the world? Do you want to make
a few quid?
Answer: In the long term, we want to save the world (be sustainable) but we need a
few quid to do it.
- Viable processes
- Partnership working
- Individual players are usually too little – scale – hence partnerships
- Geographical elements
- Must share the same vision as any partners you have
- How to create local markets?
Need to:
Encourage and develop MARKETS
Consider partnerships and get an agreed vision
Paper
Possible products/after uses:
- Potential road surfacing (paper fibres)
- deadens sound
- Loft insulation (fire proof)
- compacted board
- Fuel pellets
- Paper insulation board
- Animal bedding
- More newspapers
- Composting
How to define local?
- Regionalisation issue – is local
- Hampshire
- surrounding counties?
- South East England?
- Where are the paper mills?
- Liverpool
- North Wales
- Lancashire
- Scotland
- Build a local facility – site will be opposed, like any other recycling
facility
- Competition plays a part
- ‘Local’ may be national
How can Local Authorities get paper mills to buy the paper they collect?
- Legally prescriptive
- ‘Preferred supplier’
- Long-term contracts
- Market needs – collect the right amount of material for available recycling
facilities.
- Example of Germany – a law was passed to recycle newspapers – loads of
paper mills were built, and the price of paper dived
- Sustainable schemes
- Stimulate markets for the products
- What to collect?
- Quality issues?
- Where & When to deliver?
- Get businesses to take the risk and invest in producing recycling facilities
– products.
Practical Solutions to close the loop for paper recycling
- Collect on a local basis for market needs. The buyer needs to specify what they
want – long term contract/partnership that is flexible.
- Develop partnerships involve local authorities, work with contractor and or/buyer
to collect the right stuff in the right way.
- Tap into local entrepreneurs, experts, and take some risks.
- It’s not waste, it’s a resource. Get it right and it’s a valuable
resource. Don’t call it waste paper, but recovered paper - therefore a
valuable commodity.
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