NEWS ITEM

Spotlight on Wiltshire Waste

Almost half the rubbish we throw away in Wiltshire consists of garden and kitchen waste, according to a meticulous waste stock take.

And waste consultants whose snapshot survey looked at everything from street sweepings to wheelie bins, also found people were still throwing away lots of cardboard and paper despite the presence of good recycling facilities on their doorstep.

The survey also looked at the county’s household recycling centres and found that more than a third of unsorted waste delivered to the centres could have been recycled. Materials most commonly brought to the sites was dense plastic such as plastic toys and garden chairs.

The waste compositional analysis was funded by DEFRA and gave Wiltshire County Council waste management teams a snapshot of our county’s throwaway habits.

Now rubbish in West Wiltshire and South Wiltshire is about to go under the spotlight for another scientific stock take.

Environmental consultants Entec will be carrying out a four day analysis of waste at the county council’s Marlborough depot. The survey, which is funded by DEFRA, starts on Monday January 22 and will run for four days.

Specialist staff will look at the contents of wheelie bins and black bags – literally sifting through the rubbish complete with protective clothing, gloves and masks.

Samples for the surveys will be collected by the local waste collection authorities as part of normal collection rounds and delivered to Marlborough. The survey will not be able to collect data on individuals and will be published as an overall snapshot of each area.

“With our early surveys we were delighted to see very little contamination was found in the recycling, so it was great to see people making the most of facilities on offer. We are anticipating these latest surveys will show a much higher percentage of sorting and recycling is going on – recycling has moved on a great deal in the last twelve months,” said Wiltshire County Council waste services manager Andy Conn.

He said the surveys enabled the waste management team to find out exactly what is contained in the county’s rubbish so waste management services can be tailored to suit the needs of local people. “The latest surveys will concentrate on waste from south Wiltshire and west Wiltshire and will enable us to check the calorific value of the rubbish left after recyclables have been taken out,” he explained.

The two districts have been chosen especially because their waste is due to be diverted from landfill to new treatment facilities later this decade.

The waste from the Salisbury district is due to be processed at a new Energy from Waste plant being built at Colnbrook near Slough where rubbish will be turned into energy to feed the National Grid. Waste from west Wiltshire is expected to be processed at a mechanical and biological treatment plant at Westbury. There the waste will be processed to provide a fuel to replace fossil fuels at the nearby Lafarge cement works.

A public exhibition about the MBT plant was held at Westbury last week and a planning application by county council waste contractors, the Marlborough based Hills group, is expected to be submitted shortly.

Wiltshire currently recycles around 39 per cent of its rubbish – and its household recycling centres are among the best performing nationwide.

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