It was ‘pat yourselves on the back’ time for the Labour-run council at the September 5th council meeting with their motion to coincide with the brown bin roll out.
The Labour motion “welcomes Sheffield’s success in Reducing, Reusing, Recycling and Recovering household waste” with only 0.28% going to landfill. Without mentioning our woeful recycling and composting rate – 314th out 350 local authorities. This means more than two thirds of Sheffield’s waste is burnt, polluting the city.
It outlined an annual “£750,000 saving to the waste service” while omitting to mention the £6.6 million cost of implementing these citywide changes, payable over 18 years.
Publicity highlights “increased capacity for paper and card recycling” but both recycling bins will now be collected monthly instead of fortnightly.
I was at the planning committee meeting that approved the building of the incinerator in 2001. Greens warned then that it would offer no flexibility or incentive to accommodate new recycling initiatives with the council contractually obliged to provide enough waste to feed the incinerator. And so it has proved, with no prospect of anything more than treading water on recycling until the Veolia contract ends in 2036.
We are told this an “improved recycling service”. The distressing truth is that a lot of what you put in your brown and blue bins won’t be recycled – it will be burnt.
Bernard Little
Walkley ward Green Party
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