29 January 2024

In late November I had the chance to visit a place I'd been wanting to see for years. Nothing as exciting as the Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House though, this was a visit to the Material Recycling Facility in Crayford where all of our dry recycling is sorted to be sent on for recycling and re-use.

Way back in 2017 when I was involved with the Plastic Free Faversham campaign group, I visited the incinerator at Allington where our rubbish is burned to generate electricity, and on another occasion we visited the site where our food and garden waste is turned into compost. I never managed to make it to the place which arguably held the answer to the most frequently asked questions around our household waste. Questions like 'how clean does food packaging need to be before it's put in the recycling?' (quite clean, but it doesn't need to be spotless), 'can black plastic actually be recycled now?' (sometimes), and 'can I put tetrapak cartons in the recycling?' (sadly, not at the current time, but soon!).

The visit was prompted in part by the fact that Swale Borough Council is about to start a new contract for household waste collection. From late March, our bins will all be collected by Suez instead of Biffa, and our collection days may change – a letter will be going out to all households in the coming weeks to confirm whether your collection day will be the same or not, and I will aim to provide this information in the piece I write next month if I can.

The new contract gives us a chance to try and redouble our efforts to improve the rates of dry recycling we collect across Swale which, over the last few years, have remained fairly flat and well below where they could potentially be.

There are two issues which cause our recycling rates to be lower than they could. The first is the more obvious one, that people are putting perfectly recyclable items in their household waste. The second, less obvious but more harmful one, is that residents are putting non-recyclable items into their blue recycling bins. This is far more problematic as it can cause entire lorry loads full of recyclable waste to be rejected when they reach the transfer station in Sittingbourne, which means (literally) tons of paper, plastic and glass is sent for incineration rather than recycling.

On the same day as the visit to Crayford, we visited the transfer station at Sittingbourne and saw two lorry loads of recycling unloaded. Unfortunately both loads were rejected as the levels of contamination within them were too high. Most of the items responsible for the loads being rejected were clearly not appropriate to go into the recycling. There were used disposable nappies, an old pillow, and a large amount of the material was shiny and stuck together with something that may have been used cooking oil.

A large part of our work in the coming years will be trying to get the message out about the harm putting non-recyclable items in your blue bin, and our comms team have already put together a video with footage filmed at the transfer station - http://tinyurl.com/sbc1223

Officers within the council often use the term 'dry recycling' when referring to the materials that are suitable to go into blue bins, and I think if we could use this term publicly more often it may help to shift perceptions a little and start to reduce this problem.

Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk

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Promoted by T. Valentine on behalf of Swale Green Party, PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ

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