Liverpool’s “100%” commitment to recycling

October 18th, 2006

For a long time, I’ve been incensed at the garbage trucks that rattle about my neighbourhood. Not because they’re loud and smell bad - what irks me is the giant advert emblazoned across the side which reads, “Liverpool: 100% Commitment to Recycling”. This annoys me because I suspect that Liverpool has one of the worst recycling rates in Europe.

Their 100% commitment doesn’t extend to providing me with glass recycling, and moreso, the Council won’t provide recycling boxes to apartment blocks (that’ll be most the city centre residents then). Neither do they provide me with doorstep recycling - it’s up to me to haul my cans and paper down the road each week.

I felt the need to put this up after reading the Echo yesterday. Apparently, not only is Liverpool fairly uncommitted to the collection of recyclable waste, it’s also completely adverse to actually recycling it. Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority yesterday admitted that rubbish collected from 18,500 homes on the Wirral for “recycling” is in fact being put into landfill.

The compost, made of garden and food waste, has not been approved by the State Veterinary Service as safe to be put on land. It would be, had it been made from pure garden waste, and over 2,500 tonnes of garden waste collected from 75,000 homes _is_ producing usable compost. Consider though, that a mere 18,500 homes produced nearly the same amount of combined food and garden waste - 2,175 tonnes in under four months.

This means each house is producing about two and a half times as much food waste as garden waste. This food waste is either thrown in the bin and sent to landfill, or, collected for recycling and.. err… sent to landfill. Consider also that there is no recycling facility at all for the 6000 tonnes of food waste produced by the homes given “garden waste only” sacks.

I can think of many things to describe this “commitment to recycling”, but “100%” isn’t one of them.

Article in the Liverpool Echo

Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority

Entry Filed under: General

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