With hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste going unrecycled across Merseyside every year, here’s how you can make sure you’re recycling correctly.
Parts of Merseyside have some of the worst recycling rates in the country. More than 100,000 tonnes of waste going unrecycled in Wirral every year.
On top of this, about 20% of waste in recycling bins isn’t recyclable either due to contamination or things being bagged. The other 80% then gets taken toa facility in Gillmoss run by Veolia where it is sorted.
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To tackle poor recycling rates, the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority (MRWA) have spent more than £50,000 on a campaign between September and February to give advice on how to recycle properly.
Paul Cannon, business manager at Veolia said: “We are asking people to recycle correctly. That means what we want is the big six items. Cardboard, paper, both drink and food cans, plastic bottles, as well as glass bottles and jars.
“People also need to make sure the material comes into us unbagged. That’s the biggest mistake people make. If we get it bagged we lose the opportunity to recycle that and we’ve haven’t got the capability in the process to open these bags up so it’s lost at that point.
“We also want people to put the materials into the recycling bins in the form they came in so we don’t want any cans or bottles squashed with paper and cardboard left in the manner they were bought in.”
With bin workers going on strike in December and waste processing facilities closing over much of the Christmas break, some bins have not been collected for weeks with councils urging people to leave their bins out and store waste correctly due to the disruption.
Waste that goes unrecycled now rarely ends up in landfill and is instead incinerated in Wilton generating enough energy to power 63,000 homes.
At a waste processing site in Gillmoss, Liverpool, more than 350 tonnes of waste on average are processed every day with around 35 tonnes an hour. The equivalent of shifting about 64 African elephants every day.
This equals 150,000 tonnes a year, which is processed for recycling 24 hours a day. This gets even busier around Christmas when the amount of waste processed goes up by around 25% with things like wrapping paper.
At Gillmoss, it is emptied onto the floor which can hold up to 800 tonnes of recyclable waste filling up in about two days. Two tonnes is processed at a time with dangerous items like gas bottles, hosepipes and batteries removed first.
Then the waste is sorted by size and weight, which is why squishing your bottles and boxes to make them fit isn’t a good idea. Anything that shouldn’t be on the belt is then blown off with metal items that are sucked up via magnets.
Ian Stephenson, assistant director of Operations at MRWA said: “I understand it can be complicated but there’s lots of advice and help on RecycleRight, you can contact the MRWA or your local council, or your local waste disposal centre and ask someone for help.”
The MRWA has committed to a target of recycling 55% of all LCR waste and 70% of plastic by 2025. Changes could come in in the next few years with promises by the UK government to roll out recycling of food waste across England.
This would mean people would have a separate bin and reduce the 9.5m tonnes of food waste thrown away in the UK each year. The government promised these changes could come into force in 2023.
Mr Cannon said: “I think it’ll be a really difficult challenge to achieve that level of recycling by 2025 but I think working together we can get there.
“I know just around the corner there’s government legislation on changes to kerbside recycling so hopefully by pulling together and all doing the right thing we can do our best to achieve as close as we can to that 55% target.”
For information on the RecycleRight campaign, click here.
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