My council are proposing reducing the collection frequency of non-recyclable waste whilst increasing that for recycled. I know that the non-recyclable is expensive to bury/burn and isn’t the best environmentally, but do they make money selling the recycled or is it merely cheaper to get rid of?

The contract is normally tendered out, or at least the contract of receiving all the waste they collect and there is value in it but there is also a cost to the collection and sorting so I don’t know what the result is in terms of figures. I do know they already charge us for collection in our council tax though 🙄

[Put simply] They use revenue from the recyclates to subsidise collection and the disposal of non-recyclable waste – it’s an expensive business. The waste reamins the property of the council in virtually all cases and they take the revenue – the contractors may take a percentage for negotiating better prices etc.

Some councils do, if they make a profit depends on the processing costs as already said, but the output of the process they can sell. Mainly it’s because they have to chase targets of recycling, which is fine by me, the more recycled material the better.

Would also like councils to invest in their processing plants to make it easier for households, as most people are lazy when sorting. My current place I can recycle just about anything apart from plastic film and polystyrene, but all of it just goes in one big recycling bin and the processing plant sort it. Easy to do, easy to sort in the house, no messing about.

In my new place I’m going back to 5 different bins, which means 5 different piles in the house or constant trips outside, checking what can go in what bin as you can have paper in one with glass, but you can’t put cardboard in with paper. I can see why people just shove it in the normal bin as it’s a faf.

Anyway, I know that wasn’t the question…

The reason the Councils are pushing for more recycling and less landfill is because of the Government’s landfill and recycling targets. If Councils landfill too much waste, they get penalty fines. The driver is that we are running out of space for landfill and it is expensive in the long-term to manage and remediate landfill sites.

konagirl – Member

The reason the Councils are pushing for more recycling and less landfill is because of the Government’s landfill and recycling targets. If Councils landfill too much waste, they get penalty fines. The driver is that we are running out of space for landfill and it is expensive in the long-term to manage and remediate landfill sites.

Yeah, better to get everyone to recycle as much as possible, store it in a recycling centre and burn the whole lot to the ground. 👿

I recently found out (from someone at a large packaging manufacturer) that you can take a lot of the plastic films that the council won’t take back to most supermarkets.

I hate putting things in the landfill bin as I think just about everything should be recyclable.

We had a argument with our council recently over recycling. We ordered some new bins when we moved to our new place, 6 months later still no sign of them. I kept finding the contents of our recycling bin in the grey bin as they couldnt be bothered (stuff that was perfectly recyclable) and they would refuse to take cardboard, even if it was flattened down, if it was stood in another cardboard box as we didn’t have any plastic boxes. The guy changes his tune when he found our 6 month old request for boxes on his system…

The reason the Councils are pushing for more recycling and less landfill is because of the Government’s landfill and recycling targets.

Actually an EU directive to reduce waste and the UK Government gets fined if it fails to meet targets. I’m pretty sure the Tories don’t give a stuff about recycling and would be quite happy to just pile all rubbish in poor areas (Labour boroughs), given half the chance.

Yeah, better to get everyone to recycle as much as possible, store it in a recycling centre and burn the whole lot to the ground.

A waste center near me in Thirsk happens to go up in flames every two years. 😕

Many landfill operators charge the local councils for the waste they bury, there are also many landfill sites extracting methane and using it for both recip/turbine power generators feeding onto the grid.
There is currently research into gasifying landfill waste to extract fuel gases.
Ive also read somewhere that Norway has been buying our lf waste to fire incinerators which fire boilers>steam turbine> power 2 grid.

I think waste management is fairly lucrative atm.

Go to your local tip in a van, present more than two bags of rubble, “ooo mate you can’t bring anymore of that this year” repeat journey with van full of cardboard, “you want any help with that mate”
👿

I think waste management is fairly lucrative atm.

Always has been 😉

Lots of “lf” waste i.e. black bag waste is now incinerated for energy recovery. Trouble is that it is causing laziness in that recycling drops when there is an ‘easy option’ to just burn everything. Its a complicated industry made much worse than it need be by a Government that couldn’t give a toss. Its one thing that those commie Europeans deal with much more professionally and sustainably than we do.

When you consider how good our innovation is over here, many of the recycling techniques are invented here, you begin to realise just how screwed up our waste policies are.

All councils have to pay a landfill tax per ton of waste dumped in a hole in the ground, so recycling is a better option, either at home with multiple bins or a mixed bin where everyting recyclable is put into one bin taken to a centre and dumped on a conveyor after going past a magnet to take out ferrous metals cans etc,the rest is sorted by hand or in a huge tumble dryer type thing that is able to sort plastic and aluminium and paper and carboard out, clever stuff,
Do we really in this century still want to be dumping stuff in landfill when it can be reused/recycled.
Some countries are also tip mining where they dig into an old tip and take out the metals and plastics.

Plastic bags can be returned to supoermarkets as can old batteries and more.

Lots of “lf” waste i.e. black bag waste is now incinerated for energy recovery. Trouble is that it is causing laziness in that recycling drops when there is an ‘easy option’ to just burn everything.

Most waste is sorted before it goes to incineration. Then the ash is used for roads and building materials and the metal that is in the ash is removed and sold on

Or put it on a boat and dump it in china given cost of transport is cheaper than other solutions.

It’s now cheaper to catch fish in the North Sea, ship it to china for filleting and bring it back than just fillet it here.

(For lots of fish not just one!)

That doesn’t answer your question but this is stw 🙂

It’s now cheaper to catch fish in the North Sea, ship it to china for filleting and bring it back than just fillet it here.

lazy things fish,they should be made to swim out there, may be a bit more difficult for them to swim back though.

To answer the OP, yes the council do sell it. That means someone’s got to buy it. If nobody wants to but it, it ends up in landfill. However the council still have claimed this option of waste which has been recycled, although still ends up in landfill. So when they claim they have recycled x% of waste they collect! what do they then do with the waste….

The 1998 EU landfill directive is the relevant piece of legislation which the government is obliged to comply with.

The majority of waste which goes to landfills originates from the construction industry. Recycling your green glass beer bottle is as effective as urinating against a tidal wave.

We should be reusing the bloody things, not recycling them.

Yep, reuse is a great step. Take the middle man out of recycling.

Fortnightly collections are more normal these days.

A few years ago when fortnightly collections came in round where we were. Our recycling was normally overflowing as we could put all in one bin. Down the road there were cardboard boxes overflowing out of others normal waste bin and the recycling empty.

If you do it right there should be no need to empty your main bin weekly, if your running out of space it should make people think about recycling. Hopefully eventually people get what the other bin is for.

It depends on the specifics of the contract, but usually the income from the recyclates will be offset against any collection and/or processing costs leaving the council with either an income or reduced costs. On longer term contracts then there might be an assumed long term base income with a profit sharing mechanism if incomes exceed the baseline.

As for it being a lucrative business I’ve seen the return rates and they aren’t huge bearing in mind the risks the Contractors bear and the scale of the investments they make.

Already considered asking to swap our non recyclable bin for the skinny eqivalent but remembered it’s a great way to get rid of stuff that would otherwise need bulk uplift (which costs round here, way to encourage flytipping).

Stuff at the tip like bikes and computers supposedly get parted out to go to various charities who reuse them and such, just a shame they won’t let the people who actually pay for the processing take useful stuff as well. As said, better to reuse than recycle.

The reason you can’t take from the Ca sites is duty of care, a client of mine got pinged when material from its reuse collection got illegally shipped abroad by a 3rd party, it’s absolute liability for your waste too. Contractors are therefore reluctant to let it go except to verified subbies.

And with little Un in nappies I could still easily do 4 weeks between bin empties, more if we had food collections.

To answer the OP, yes the council do sell it. That means someone’s got to buy it. If nobody wants to but it, it ends up in landfill. However the council still have claimed this option of waste which has been recycled, although still ends up in landfill. So when they claim they have recycled x% of waste they collect! what do they then do with the waste….

The 1998 EU landfill directive is the relevant piece of legislation which the government is obliged to comply with.

The majority of waste which goes to landfills originates from the construction industry. Recycling your green glass beer bottle is as effective as urinating against a tidal wave.

Complete bollox from beginning to end.

Fair enough but they seem to manage it in some LA areas.

Come the day when I get the national contract for ‘Her Majestys prison and correctional recycling centres’

To produce new steel aluminium and glass requires us to use raw materials and a lot of heat/energy, and proccessing, reusing more recycled stuff, it just needs melting down and remanufacturing into a new product, which can in time be recycled.