Graham, Tom and Ian

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Stockport’s top at recycling, but can we recycle more?

by Lib Dem team on 3 April, 2012

The residents of Stockport Borough have massively increased the amount we all recycle over the last 18 months. We now recycle over 60% of our household waste, making us number one in the country among metropolitan boroughs and in the top three or four of all boroughs.

Our recycling success has brought in lots of money – over £5 million so far. That’s why Lib Dem Stockport has been able to freeze council tax this year without cutting valuable services.

But can we recycle even more? We certainly hope so.

There are two ways we can do it.

First, we still don’t recycle everything we could. Some food, cardboard etc. still goes into the black bins instead of the green, blue and brown ones. The more we can recycle in the right bins, the more money we get back (as it costs a lot more to put something into landfill than to recycle it).

Second, we can recycle some things we currently don’t. For example, we recycle plastic bottles, but not other plastics.

That’s not as simple as just putting something new in the bin though. To recycle something, we need someone to buy what we’re throwing away. Everything we currently recycle – glass, paper, card, tins, waste food and the rest – we have a buyer for. There currently isn’t a market that will buy the other items.

Some other councils do allow more things to be put in the recycling bins. They might ask residents to put yoghurt pots in, for example. As far as I know, these are not recycled – they get incinerated.

In Stockport we also incinerate those items – in fact, we incinerate everything we can from the black bin (basically, all the items with a calorific value that makes them work burning to generate power).

   8 Comments

8 Responses

  1. Gaz says:

    I’ve contacted you before about this issue such as having to put fabric softener lids into the black bin when they are the same plastic (2) as milk bottles. Needlessly wasteful in the long term. So advice should be anything with a (2) symbol go’s into the brown bin if it be a lid or bottle.

  2. bruce thwaite says:

    My son lives in Teddington and he can recycle more items than we can. For example they can recycle almost any plastic container – like the ones that tomatoes come in. Is there a definitive list of the items we can recycle in our bins?

  3. Iain Roberts says:

    Hi Bruce, Gaz,

    The issue with other plastics is that there isn’t a market for them. Some places, such as Teddington, allow people to put them in the recycling containers. We ask people to put them in the black bin. The result is the same in both cases – they are generally incinerated.

    The issue of lids is slightly different. Some lids may be recyclable, but they cause problems for the separating equipment the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority have so we can’t currently recycle them.

  4. Paula Isherwood says:

    John and I are going to the Viridor meeting on Thursday. Do you think we should ask about the future of recycling at Viridor? You can come too if you like. 6.00 pm at the Education centre.

  5. Iain Roberts says:

    Hi Paula,

    Please do ask. The aim is to recycle everything that there’s a market for – if we can sell it to someone, we can recycle it.

    With Stockport being in the top four recyclers in the whole country, we’re doing pretty well at the moment, but if we can do better, we will.

  6. Carolyn Minkes says:

    I live on my own and with the exception of the green bin and the food waste bin they are all too large and unwieldy. I hardly ever put them out, they take up a huge amount of space and I pay a fortune in council tax for them to occupy a good bit of my garden. I am all for recycling but the council should offer alternatives like other councils e.g. boxes.

  7. Steve Whitaker says:

    Three points if I may. First, my daughter lives in Poynton and Macclesfield council operate a single bin for items that can be recycled. So paper, card, tins, bottles, plastic bottles, plastic trays, bottle tops all go into the same bin. This takes away the nightmare of inadvertently putting the wrong item into the wrong bin. It must also reduce collection costs and the nightmare we have in always knowing when to put out the correct bin.
    Second, whilst I appreciate different councils operate in different ways, councils must also appreciate that people will be more committed to recycling if the process is simple and easy.
    Third, if there is not a market for certain materials to be recycled, why not ban them? Then producers would have to use materials that are recyclable. It is the supermarkets that dictate how they want products to be packaged for their convenience, not ours. Once again, the tail wags the dog.

  8. Iain Roberts says:

    Hi Steve,

    There are different ways to do recycling – the main issue in Stockport is that we recycle more than Poynton and Macclesfield do because of the way we do the bins (our recycling rate has soared since the new bin system came in).

    That also reduces the Council’s costs as there’s less cost involved in separating out all the different items.

    Ideally, perhaps we should move towards banning items that can’t be recycled, but that would have to be done at a national level and I’m sure there would be issues (e.g if there’s no good alternative).

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