Greens: London Councils Guilty of 'Greenwash'

Link to businessGreen

" 'Lambeth recycling rate soars!' screamed the headline on Lambeth's website. But the figures unraveled further down the page. The council explained the surge in recycling came from a switch from sending waste to landfill to sending compostoble or recyclable waste to an 'energy from waste (EfW)' plant in Bexley, rather than a recycling plant.

"The council had also counted bottom ash from the incinerator and other debris that is being used for road building as recycled waste, providing a boost to its recycling rates.

"Wandsworth, a borough of the Western Riverside Waste Authority and user of the Bexley EfW plant for 'residual waste' provided the same explanation for its imrpved recycling figures. Significantly, Wandsworth has revised its recycling figure from 45.9 to 43.8 per cent in the last few days on its council webpage.

"I really don't think it is right for councils to publish inflated recycling figures on their websites, and presumably in its literature to residents, when in fact it does not reflect official data.

The Independent: "A lesson in packaging myths: Is shrink-wrap on a cucumber really mindless waste?"

Link to web site

"It's easy to picture the 10 million tonnes of packaging we get through in Britain each year as a towering, dirty mountain of pollution and doom. Or, if it's more useful, imagine the equivalent weight of 35 jumbo jets a day or a quarter of the contents of your bins.

"However you do the maths, packaging is bad news for the planet, and as Christmas consumption reaches a peak, those mountains, planes and bins only look dirtier.

"But packaging is not necessarily evil, as veterans of the industry point out in a new book. In Why Shrink-wrap a Cucumber? The Complete Guide to Environmental Packaging, Stephen Aldridge and Laurel Miller unpack various myths to show how, done well, packaging can please the planet as much as it can producers, retailers and consumers."

Resource: "London authorities tender textile recycling banks"

Link to web site

"Lewisham Council is leading a procurement process for a single-provider framework to ‘significantly and cost-effectively’ increase the amount of textiles collected for reuse and recycling at several London council bring sites.

The London initiative, led by Lewisham and including the boroughs of Hounslow, Ealing, Harrow, Barnet, Sutton and Camden, was set up in response to a recently published WRAP report, ‘Valuing our Clothes’, which found that textiles – most of which are recyclable – make up three per cent of household waste per year. The report also found that in the UK over 30 per cent of clothing is still being discarded at costly landfill sites.

"Councils resort to burning millions of tons of household rubbish as amount recycled by families stalls"

Link to Daily Mail web site

"Millions of tons of household rubbish was burned instead of recycled by councils last year, new figures revealed yesterday.

"The amount sent to incinerators shot up by almost a quarter - while the amount sent for recycling went up by barely a single percentage point.

"The burning boom means millions of families who have been forced to cope with fortnightly collections, rubbish rationing and wheelie bin fines in the name of saving the environment now have to live with the pollution risks of incinerators.

"A report from the Environment Department admitted the amount of rubbish being recycled by town halls is ‘levelling off’ and that the amount of rubbish kept out of landfill is still far short of targets set by the European Union."

Sat 10 Nov: Zero Waste Community Action Conference

Zero Waste Alliance UK Conference and AGM
11.00- 3pm Saturday 10 November 2012

Greenpeace, Canonbury Villas, Islington, London N1 2PN

The conference will be followed by our AGM to which all are welcome.

Delicious vegan lunch, donations requested.

Breaking the Barriers to Zero Waste:
Community Action

Where can the community make most difference?
What works?
How we can make more impact by working together?

Speakers include:

• Morgan Phillips Waste Watch on Our Common Place Initiative
• Jonathan Essex Bioregional on the need for policy change
• Karen Cannard on taking the Rubbish Diet into the community with Transition Town Shrewsbury
• Rick Anthony Zero Waste International Alliance with an update on the Zero Waste movement across the globe

Workshops on:

• changing behaviour in our communities
• designing waste out of our world
• campaigning for policy and local authority service change.

Reserve your free place on zerowasteallianceuk.eventbrite.co.uk/

Posting on 'Wembley Matters' web site: "Harlesden residents left out in the cold over new 'energy recovery centre' neighbour "

Link to Wembley Matters

"Harlesden residents got a shock last night at the 'Harlesden Connects' forum when they heard of plans to build an 'energy recovery centre' (is this a controversy avoiding term for an incinerator?) at Willesden Junction.

It is in Ealing borough, but but very close to Brent residents. Apparently Ealing's notification to Brent Council was 'mislaid', so hardly anyone who might be affected had a chance to comment, before the conusltation closed last week. [Just a few] addresses in Ealing and handful of streets in Harlesden received a notification letter. 

---

http://www.pam.ealing.gov.uk/portal/servlets/ApplicationSearchServlet?PKID=152202

"There’s gold in them thar landfills - £650m of valuable materials being thrown every year"

Link to Evening Standard

"At least £650 million worth of valuable materials are being thrown into landfill or burned in the UK each year, despite rising costs of natural resources, campaigners warned today.

"A coalition of business groups and environmentalists said products ranging from steel, wheat and rubber to 'rare earth' metals necessary for making goods such as mobile phones will become increasingly costly, threatening UK productivity.

"The coalition, which includes the manufacturers' organisation EEF and Friends of the Earth, is demanding the Government develop an urgent action plan to preserve valuable resources, including policies to improve recycling and a ban on reusable materials going into landfill."

'Planning': Will there be too many waste plants?

Link to 'Planning' (registration may be required)

"Britain could soon end up with more residual waste treatment capacity than it needs if all schemes with planning permission go ahead, according to a research consultancy.

"... If all currently consented facilities, which have a total capacity of 18.2 million tonnes, go ahead, the current shortfall would turn into an oversupply of 4.7 million tonnes’ capacity by 2015/16, according to Eunomia."

---

"Eunomia has modelled the quantity of residual waste generated against existing and forthcoming treatment infrastructure, to determine where capacity gaps exist across Great Britain.

"The research shows that, in most regions, there may be an over-supply of treatment infrastructure by 2015/16."

---

A free 'High-Level Residual Waste Infrastructure Review' can be downloaded from the company's web site. An earlier, November 2011 version is available here.

Let's Recycle: "Brent Council raises air quality concern over waste sites"

Link to Let's Recycle

"A London council is calling for the government to have greater consideration for air quality when issuing licences for waste sites.

"Brent council has said that the regulatory and enforcement regime used to licence operators of waste sites are ineffective when it comes to ensuring commercial operators upgrade their environmental controls."

Link to London Brorough of Brent

Air Quality Action Plan.

The Independent: "Britain's waste: Now it's coming back to haunt us"

"A £300m criminal trade that smuggled rubbish out of the UK is so toxic that the trash is being sent home. Cahal Milmo saw it finish its journey from Jakarta to Felixstowe" 

Link to The Independent

"Nearly 90 containers, each weighing more than 30 tonnes, have arrived back in the bustling Suffolk dockyard of Felixstowe in the past fortnight. Their journey began last November when they left scrapyards in southern England for Indonesia, labelled as 'recyclable' material with a value of $500,000 (£318,000).

"... Four UK companies are now being investigated by the Environment Agency (EA) to see if they sent contaminated and potentially toxic waste to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, in contravention of laws designed to combat a global epidemic of cross-border dumping."

'Re-ward Club' in west London

"Re-ward Club gives you rewards when you have items repaired, hire a household item, shop in a charity shop, buy second-hand or buy recycled products. Anything, in fact, that gives a new lease of life to something you already own or that someone else has owned and loved."

Link to Re-ward Club web site

Re-ward has been set up by the West London Waste Authority and is being run in partnership with the London Borough of Brent and London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The initial set up costs have been funded through a Defra grant from the Waste Review 2011 Reward and Recognition Fund.

West London Waste Authority (WLWA)

West London Waste Authority (WLWA) is running the Re-ward Club to incentivise increased spending by residents in local shops and charity outlets that sell re-used items or repair items to extend their lifetime and prevent them being thrown away. WLWA is a local authority similar to your local council.

We provide a waste disposal service to your local council. The WLWA is financed by charges made to the councils we serve. As a public body the WLWA is not a profit making organisation. Any income that WLWA receives is used to reduce the charges to the councils and ultimately reduces the council tax bills of west London residents.

The WLWA is in the process of implementing an action plan to reduce the amount of waste collected and disposed of. This plan includes a number of actions targeting five specific materials – food, furniture, electricals, textiles and nappies.

What Re-ward Club wants to achieve

Almost 700,000 tonnes of waste is thrown in the bin every year by residents of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond. This includes many items could still be used by others. Re-ward Club is a loyalty card scheme, in many ways similar to those run by supermarkets and coffee shops. It rewards residents who take actions to reuse items or extend the lifespan of items they already own, therefore reducing the need to purchase new items or dispose of something which could still have a use.

Re-ward clubs want to do 4 things

1. Make it easy to reuse and repair
   There are a lot of local places where you can get items repaired or buy second hand items but they’re not always easy to find.  We want to shout their locations from the rooftops to show just how many places there are and help you find these locations – where you can save money and pick up a bargain. If you know where they are it’s easier for you to use them.
2. Help you reuse and repair more frequently
   It’s not always possible to get something repaired or buy it second hand but you might be surprised by what’s out there!  It doesn’t hurt to ask and now you know where all these shops are there’s no limit on how often you could use them.
3. Show you how great second hand, repaired and recycled products really are
   You might think you know what you’re going to find in a charity shop or second hand stores but you might be pleasantly surprised at how good quality some of the things you can buy really are.  It doesn’t hurt to look once and see what’s out there.  Especially when you find the Christmas decorations made from CD’s or belt from old fire hoses.
4. Support local shops
   Sometimes you don’t really think about the shop down the road when you’re on your way to wherever you need to be but if they provide you with a great service or product that can save you money and need your needs why not give it a try. Tell us about them and we’ll try to encourage them to sign up so you can get Re-ward Club tokens when you shop there.

Barnet, north London: Recycling video

"Follow your recycling on the journey it takes after it leaves your doorstep, by watching our short film."

BBC Wales: "Carrier bag charge: Supermarkets say use in Wales cut up to 90%"

Link to BBC Wales

"Supermarkets say the charge on single use carrier bags introduced in Wales has coincided with a reduction in their use of up to 90%.

"Six months since a minimum 5p charge per bag was introduced, several major supermarkets have released provisional figures to BBC Wales.

"Sainsbury's saw a 90% fall, the Co-op reported 86% and Morrisons 60%."

The Guardian: "Easter-egg makers not doing enough to cut packaging, says MP"

Link to The Guardian

"Commercially produced Easter eggs generate an estimated 3,000 tonnes of UK waste each year, according to the government's waste advisory body, Wrap. But despite some improvements, many Easter chocolate products remain over-packaged and unrecyclable, according to a report by the Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, a long-standing campaigner against excessive and wasteful packaging.

"Her 2012 Easter Egg Packaging report found that, on average, only 38% of what is in an Easter egg box is an egg – the same figure as last year. It also criticises some manufacturers for failing to ensure their packages are made from widely recyclable materials, which means that much of the packaging still ends up in landfill sites."

BBC: "What should be done about plastic bags?"

Link to BBC web site

"The European Commission is to publish proposals in the spring designed to reduce the number of plastic bags used in Europe each year. Most of the 15,000 people who took part in a public consultation favoured an outright ban - but what are the options?

"... If shoppers stop using plastic bags, they must start using other kinds of bags, but there is no perfect solution. Stronger, heavier bags, whether made of fabric or plastic, have a bigger environmental impact than standard supermarket shopping bags.

"If a plastic bag is used just once, then a paper bag must be used three times to compensate for the larger amount of carbon used in manufacturing and transporting it, a plastic 'bag for life' must be used four times, and a cotton bag must be used 131 times."

The Guardian: "London air pollution at record high"

Link to The Guardian

"Air pollution in London hit record levels on Thursday due to a combination of traffic fumes, relatively still weather and an influx of dirty air from the north of England and northern France. Poor conditions are affecting a swath of the country as far north as Leeds and York

"... Last month, the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, was criticised by an influential group of MPs for rejecting their recommendations to cut pollution on the grounds that it was too costly. Poor air quality has been linked to nearly one in five deaths a year in London. The capital's poor air quality, caused largely by traffic, has seen the UK facing £300m in fines for breaching EU targets. The government has successfully lobbied Europe to push back the deadline for meeting the targets."

Grimshaw Architects: "SITA Energy from Waste Centre, Great Blakenham, Suffolk"

Link to Grimshaw web site

"... The proposed Suffolk site is currently occupied by a Council works department, but backs directly onto the Gipping Valley. The response proposed is to create a building whose appearance reflects both the industrial agricultural heritage of Suffolk, and the constantly changing character of the sky."

Daily Telegraph: "'Moby-Duck' by Donovan Hohn is a literary voyage into our rubbish-strewn oceans"

Link to Daily Telegraph

"... For all its distractions and limitations, the message at the heart of this book is truly worthwhile. In southern Hawaii he finds 'the dirtiest beach in the world'. It is chilling to learn that sieving seawater at the centre of the North Pacific Gyre (a gyre being the confluence of wind, tide and currents that rotate at the centre of the world’s oceans, gathering detritus) produces a higher dry weight of plastic than of plankton.

The best part of this journey is its beginning, when Hohn goes to Alaska, a place we imagine teeming with grizzly bears, wild salmon, great mountains and miles and miles of wilderness. At the uninhabited Gore Point, Hohn joins the genuinely quixotic Chris Pallister and his motley crew as they retrieve and place plastic debris into thousands upon thousands of 'super sacks' that can be airlifted back to a municipal landfill.

The facts about our despoliation of the world need no embellishment. There is good science here, obscured only by Hohn’s ambition to seem literary, but he conjures a truly terrifying vision of how much new plastic tat will be born, as China’s consumerist growth outstrips even that of America."

The Guardian: "Sainsbury's changes food freezing advice in bid to cut food waste"

Link to web site

"Long-standing advice to consumers to freeze food on the day of purchase is to be changed. New labelling on food products in all Sainsbury's stores will instead advise customers to freeze food as soon as possible, up to the product's 'use by' date.

"Andrew Parry, consumer food waste prevention manager at WRAP (link to food waste) said:

"Changing the guidance to freeze before the use by date is a welcome move. Now we can all look in our fridges and know that we can freeze most items which are about to go out-of-date, and enjoy them at a later time.

In doing so, we can expect to reduce the amount of out of date food we throw away, which will in turn save us all money."

BBC: "The toughest place to be a binman"

Link to BBC web site

"Jakarta and the surrounding metropolitan areas are home to 28 million people, and the Indonesian city is struggling to cope with all the rubbish it generates. What's it like for the binmen?

"Each day soon after sunrise, Imam Syaffi sets off with his hand-pulled cart to collect the rubbish from some of the more desirable residences in Jakarta.

"With his cheery cry of 'Sampa!' (rubbish), he lets the residents in their gated homes know that he has arrived."

"London binman Wilbur Ramirez is heading to Jakarta, the vast mega city that is the capital of Indonesia. For ten days Wilbur works with Imam, one of the army of semi-destitute binmen, who collect rubbish in one of the biggest and fastest growing cities in the world."

Toughest Place to be... a Binman was on BBC Two on Sunday 29 January, and Toughest place to be features further stories Sunday 5 and 12 Feb at 21:00 GMT.

27/28/29 Jan, 11/12 Feb: 'Stuff for Free', from Healthy Planet

Link to Stuff for Free

"In January and February, Healthy Planet is offering a great opportunity to donate (and later, take for free) unwanted Christmas presents, and help the environment at the same time - at our new 'Stuff for Free' events.

"Healthy Planet's 'Stuff for Free' is a giant community reuse event - helping redistribute good quality stuff to a new home, where it will be valued.

"What's more, you'll be helping the environment. By re-using things instead of throwing them away, you'll be helping to save landfill space, reduce fly tipping and save valuable resources.

"Healthy Planet's mission is to champion new and grassroot green and healthy causes, by giving community initiatives the space and voice they need."

The Wasters Blog: "Waste: A Managed Resource By 2020"

Link to 'The Wasters Blog'

"...Numbers for EU resource usage and waste produced are huge, as given by the EU Commission:

• Disposal of 2.7bn tonnes of waste annually 
• ... 98m tonnes of which is hazardous. 
• Only 40 percent of the EU’s solid waste is re-used or recycled.

"There will within the next few years be another new layer of regulations to ensure that:

1. Higher priority is given to re-use and recycling.
2. All product design integrating a life-cycle approach, is implemented 
3. Yet bigger incentives for waste prevention and recycling, and 
4. More public investment takes place in modern facilities for waste treatment and recycling.

Four tenders short-listed for West London Waste Contract

The West London Waste Authority (WLWA) has short-listed four bidders for a long term West London Residual Waste Services contract covering the boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, and Richmond upon Thames.

"The following will now be invited to develop detailed solutions as the next stage in the competitive dialogue process that is being employed:

• Cory Environmental Ltd.
• E.ON Energy from Waste, leading a consortium with Tata Chemicals Europe Limited, with significant sub-contractor Grundon Waste Management Limited
• SITA UK Ltd., and 
• Viridor Waste Management Ltd.

"The contract involves treating up to 300,000 tonnes of residual waste per year generated by a population of 1.4 million people, and covers all aspects of treatment including any necessary transport, the operation of transfer stations, and contracts for outputs such as energy, refuse-derived fuel, recyclates etc.

"Bids were invited from 'single entity' companies, consortia, or joint ventures. The WLWA has offered its three waste transfer stations at Brentford, South Ruislip and Park Royal as part of the procurement, but also welcomed proposals involving sites within bidders’ control or which they intend to acquire.

"The next stage of the tender process will be the submission of detailed solutions by the short listed bidders in spring 2012. Two final bidders will then be selected to submit final tenders in autumn 2012. The preferred bidder will be selected in spring 2013. The new services will start in April 2015, but WLWA is exploring with bidders the opportunity for an earlier start to begin diversion from landfill as soon as possible.

"West London already recycles or composts almost 40% of its household waste, more than any other sub region of London. The new contract will allow continued flexibility to increase recycling up to at least 50% by 2020 and WLWA will focus even more on waste minimisation schemes in the future."

The Guardian: "Paper bags or plastic bags: which are best?"

Link to The Guardian

"So victory for paper bags – they are the children of trees! – in the war against decadent, dolphin-smothering plastic. Except, like most wars, it is far from clear if it has left the world a better place. 

Wrap, the government-funded company set up to reduce waste, summarises the drawbacks of paper bags: while from a renewable source and biodegradable, compostable and recyclable, they require far more energy to make and transport than plastic, have less re-use potential, and produce methane if dumped in landfill."

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"Fly-tipping in England mapped"

"Fly-tipping in the England cost local authorities over £60million in 2011. How bad is your area for dumping waste?"

WLWP published - but not on WLWP web site!

Link to LB of Brent copy of report

The West London Waste Plan's

'DRAFT Proposed Submission Version'

was published, without anyone noticing, on 11th November 2011, for the LB of Hillingdon, by Mouchel.

"In west London, six London boroughs have agreed to co-operate to produce a single waste plan for their combined area. When finalised, this plan will form part of each of their respective Local Development Frameworks. 

The West London Waste Plan details the amount for the different types of waste expected to be produced in west London up to 2026; identifies the current sites available to help deal with that waste; identifies the current shortfall of facilities needed, and proposes a set of further sites which might be used for waste facilities in the future."

"This Plan will be adopted, after Examination in Public and consideration of the appointed Inspector’s report, by each of the constituent boroughs. It will take on the status of a statutory Development Plan Document, and its policies will be accorded considerable weight by each local planning authority and the Secretary of State in determining planning applications for waste management facilities within the plan area.

"You can make representations on this proposed submission draft of the West London Waste Plan, including the Sustainability Appraisal and Equalities Impact Assessment during a six week period commencing from the 19 January 2012.

"All representations made will be considered by a Planning Inspector at a formal process called an examination in public. The purpose of the examination is to consider whether the Waste Plan complies with the legal requirements and is ‘sound’.

"Since the Planning Inspector’s role is to answer these questions, any comments on the Plan will need to be related to legal compliance and 'soundness'.

"All responses must be received by 1 March 2012. All representations and other material in support of any comments made should be sent to:

CAG Consultants
West London Waste Plan Consultation
Gordon House, 6 Lissenden Gardens, London, NW5 1LX
Email: consultation@wlwp.net

"Comments can also be given via the website: www.wlwp.net."