TALKING RUBBISH.
Three years ago I would not have imagined that what seemed a simple matter could, in reality, be so complicated. If readers could think for a moment what it would be like to be given the task of designing and building the next Concorde and putting it into service, with the brief that it must meet all Government and European regulations, be faster, quieter, more environmentally friendly, cheaper to run, and more commercially successful than the old Concorde, all with a limited amount taxpayer’s money, then you have an idea of the scale of the task I and my Council colleagues have been dealing with in coming up with the best way to bring Harlow’s waste collection into the 21st century.
Firstly though, let me try to deal with complaints that people have not been consulted about this issue. Harlow Council has 33 Councillors, that’s about one for each 1,500 people who can vote. Like MPs, we are elected to represent all the people of Harlow, but we are also elected on a party basis, so have a duty to follow our own party policy. We are also mandated to make decisions on behalf of the public. Otherwise we would be powerless to get anything done.
Consultation can mean different things to different people. For instance some people think it would be more democratic to make decisions by referendum, but that is a very dangerous system, as it is dependant on voters having an understanding of very complex issues, can be subject to all sorts of temporary influences and would be hugely expensive, cumbersome and slow. What would be the point of having elected Councillors? So, the way we have always done things in this country is to use referendums only where issues that affect the way we are governed are concerned – what are called ‘Constitutional’ matters.
Perhaps it will become clear below how ‘consultation’ would be almost impossible on a project such as this. With whom would we consult? A select panel of residents? Would they be more representative than Councillors? Would they be available for 18 months or more? Publish minutes and wait for reaction? There are literally hundreds of pages of reports and minutes to be read to understand the issues. Hold open meetings or ‘roadshow’ events? Any of these would have prolonged the project by months if not years.
Some readers will recall that we had a referendum some years ago to decide whether Harlow wanted to continue with a Council system where major decisions are taken after debate in public by committees and put to the full Council for final debate and vote, or to have a Mayor who would take decisions alone, or a Mayor or Council Leader who would take decisions with a small number of experienced Councillors, called a Cabinet. Harlow voted overwhelmingly to keep the Committee System, because it is more open and accountable, but Harlow was one of only a handful of councils across the country to do so.
Whenever Harlow Council has complicated issues to investigate and decide on, we can form working parties to carry out the work and report regularly to the relevant committee by minutes, which are open to public scrutiny along with the committee agendas, unless they contain matters which involve personal or commercially sensitive information. Working parties usually contain one Councillor from each party to work with Council Officers whose jobs relate to the subject, and any outside experts or consultants. Working parties frequently visit, or take account of, other Councils, businesses and organisations that have done similar work, and liaise with Essex County Council where matters involve or depend on County policy.
Thus it has been with our Waste Contract Members Working Party which was formed in October 2007 in order to prepare the Council to let a new waste contract in June 2009, when the current contract with Veolia ends. This is of great importance, since such contracts involve huge sums of money and therefore have to be for long periods, usually between 5 and 10 years, to get maximum value. Even a small Council like Harlow currently has to spend around £2 million a year just to collect our waste. That’s about £55 a year for every Council Tax payer, and a much bigger part of our Council Tax goes to Essex County Council to pay for them to dispose of the waste we collect.
As a Conservative Councillor on the Environment & Community Committee (E&C) I have taken an interest in the complex issue of Global Warming. I have tried to separate facts from myths and apply science to the issue. One part of this is how we dispose of our ever-increasing waste. We have traditionally dumped waste into the ground, what is called ‘Landfill’. But a huge part (68%) of this is made up of organic materials that decompose, giving off various ‘greenhouse’ gasses, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in massive amounts, contributing to global warming. In addition we are still burying valuable resources, like paper, glass, plastics and metals that could be recycled, saving energy and rapidly depleting natural resources like trees and oil.
In August 2007 Harlow Council commissioned a survey of residents about recycling. It found a quarter of people would agree to spend more on waste collection and recycling, while only a 5% wanted to spend less. While most people knew about recycling 80% thought this was ‘very important’ and wanted to know more and 20% thought it ‘important’. None said it was ‘unimportant’. Over half of people (54%) said the current blue boxes and white bags were too small and 57% said they would like a wheelie bin. This figure rose to 71% among people aged between 25-44. Of those over 65 28% said they would prefer wheelie bins. Overall, 57% of people thought recycling should be easier.
Whether or not we agree with the EU, we are way behind many of our European neighbours in our approach to waste collection and disposal, and the Government has set targets for reducing landfill and greenhouse gasses that are very challenging indeed, considering our starting point in Essex of 36% recycling (2006/7) and our target of 60% by 2020.
There are economic drivers for us to hit these targets. The first is the tax we have to pay on every ton of waste sent to landfill, which will increase from £24 this year (a total of £11 million for Essex) by £8 a year to £48 (£24 million) by 2010, on top of the estimated waste budget of £57 million. In addition, the Government will levy a ‘fine’ on the County Council of £150 a tonne if it does not meet its landfill reduction targets. These could amount to £9 million next year. All this will have to be paid in extra Council Tax, or reduced services like police, schools and Social Services. Last year, Essex produced almost 700,000 tons of waste, of which Harlow alone contributed over 29,000 tons.
Against this backdrop, our Working Party had to consider all the ways we might meet these challenges over the next ten years or so of our new waste collection contract. Not only had we to meet residents’ expectations, meet our recycling targets and reduce landfill, we had to try to keep the cost down to affordable limits.
There are about 34,500 households in Harlow. Each has its own difficulties in relation to storing and collecting their waste. If you asked every householder what their preferences were you might get dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different responses as to their ideal way of having waste collected. Practically, there can be only a handful of methods that could be used.
The Working Party looked at all the different types of waste - plastics, glass, metals, food, garden waste, nappies, - all the possible ways of storing it, bins, sacks, bags, containers, and all the possible combinations of collection times, weekly, fortnightly or booked. We boiled these down to 14 different combinations. All 14 had benefits and drawbacks, and each had a cost and likely outcome in terms of improved recycling.
To determine which of these options could work in Harlow we commissioned a study of every home in Harlow to determine which could accommodate one or more wheelie bins at the front of the property or would have access to the side or rear from which a wheelie bin could be pulled out.
This took about two months to complete, using specially trained teams of people. A lot of information emerged but in the end it helped us to determine which of Harlow’s 34,500 dwellings might accommodate wheelie bins and which could not. This enabled us to make a more informed decision about the final options for collection.
We decided quite early on that a kerbside collection of garden waste, while adding markedly to our recycling tonnage, would not fulfil our responsibility towards reducing greenhouse gas. In fact, because of the collection and transport implications, these gasses would increase. The best option would be to encourage home composting, while retaining the current free bookable service to collect items like tree pruning that are not compostable.
We also wanted to fall in line with the Essex scheme to take food waste out of landfill by using a new development, In-Vessel Composting (IVC), that allows food and other ‘organic’ waste to be ‘digested’ in a container, producing methane gas, which is used as fuel to power the plant, and a residue that, when dried, can be used as a fertiliser.
We wanted to increase the capacity for residents to store recycling, but didn’t want them to have to sort out their recycling, so we wanted bigger bins, where they can be accommodated, to replace the present boxes and bags that allow spillage and get blown about. We also wanted to retain the present fortnightly recycling collection.
We wanted to keep weekly collections of anything that would smell or attract flies, vermin , cats, dogs etc., especially in summer, but provide secure containers that would not allow such smells to leak out nor suffer from the present problem with bags being split open by those pests foraging for food, with all the attendant problems of food and other waste being spilled.
So, we decided on a large wheelie bin for the mixed recycling and a smaller bin, with securable lid, for ‘organic’ waste to be collected weekly. We also wanted residents to be able to store organic waste separately indoors on a daily basis, so they do not have to go to the outside bin every time they prepare and eat a meal. So we decided a small bin, or ‘caddy’, should also be provided for the kitchen, which could be emptied every day or two into the outside bin. It is not necessary to use bags in this process. Ordinary plastic bags cannot be used as they will not ‘digest’ but ‘bio-degradeable’ bags, available quite cheaply, or newspaper, can be used if desired.
Then the question of disposable nappies arose, which are not at the moment recyclable, although there is some hope they may become so in the next year or two. We wanted to provide a free service that collected these weekly, but which was flexible enough to keep up with the changing pattern as new babies are born and older children progress out of nappies. So we decided on a service to allow new mothers to book for a fixed period, say a year at a time,
That left us with what to do with the small amount of dry waste that is neither recyclable nor organic. In most homes this will amount to less than a carrier bag full a week, which would not be economic to collect on a weekly basis. So we decided to collect this fortnightly and provide a second, smaller wheelie bin to store this, which would also render unnecessary the present ‘black sacks’. This has the added incentive of encouraging recycling by use of the kitchen caddy and organic bin for the weekly collections.
Having thus decided what we wanted to do we had to decide how to achieve it, at what cost, and what combination of methods and collections would give us the best recycling performance. This reduced the 14 methods to three, and then to one, which we called ‘Option 3’. This is to retain a weekly collection but for ‘organic’ waste (also called bio-degradeable waste, food waste, or ‘smelly’ waste) via the ‘caddy’ system, to collect mixed recycling fortnightly, from a ‘large’ wheelie bin wherever possible, and to collect the dry residual waste from a smaller ‘wheelie’ bin on the alternate week.
We also wanted to retain the present ‘bookable’ garden waste service, introduce a new ‘bookable’ nappy and incontinence service (aside from the NHS scheme that collects ‘clinical’ waste from patients with special medical problems or who are on specific medicines), retain the fee ‘Heavy Squad’, improve the ‘special’ collections of items such as batteries, and improve the ‘bottle bank’ sites to make them more accessible, cleaner, and able to deliver more and better recycling, such as cleaner, separated glass that can be used in new glass manufacturing, instead for being crushed for road surfacing, as happens with the glass collected presently from resident’s homes.
We were careful to say that we wanted to be sure that those with disabilities or other mobility problems, who may not be able to manage to manoeuvre a wheelie bin, would be eligible for ‘Assisted Collections’ as happens presently.
The next thing we had to decide was about the vehicles that we want to be used by the new contractor. These are extremely costly (about £175,000 for a large ‘crusher’) and we will need 7 or 8. We had to decide whether we want new vehicles from day 1 of the new contract, because they take about two or three months from ordering to delivery, or whether we would be happy to use second-hand vehicles for a time until new ones were delivered. We also had to decide whether it was more cost-effective for the Council to borrow money to buy them ourselves or to specify in the contract for the contractor to purchase them.
The vehicles have a service life of between 6-8 years, and that was one of the considerations when we thought about how long the contract should be. The longer the contract, the lower the price, but also the longer we are tied to one contractor when others may be improving their systems, technology and price. We decided that 7 years, with an option for an additional two years was the best.
Throughout all of the many months of these considerations, right up until the May 2008 local elections, the Working Party Chairman was Councillor Eleanor Macy, from the Liberal Democrats, Councillor Edna Stevens, (also Chairman of the Harlow Labour Party) and myself from the Conservatives. For all of that time it was the Labour/ Liberal Democrat coalition that ran Harlow Council. However, all our deliberations and decisions were unanimous and each of us regularly reported back to our various party groups in the Council. The minutes of the meetings were received and endorsed by both E & C Committee and Full Council at various times, and the agendas, including the Working Party minutes, were available to the public.
The first time that any dissention between the parties became apparent was in the run-up to the June 2008 by-election for the Harlow Common ward, during which literature was delivered by Labour, dissenting from the Working Party. Councillor Stevens repeatedly distanced herself from these leaflets, but as they persisted she did the honourable thing, resigned from the Working Party and was eventually replaced by Councillor Durcan.
For any Labour Councillor or Member of the local Labour Party to say they now oppose the decisions they took or that they were not aware of anything and everything that was happening is disingenuous to say the least, and for Councillor Spenceley to say that information is being ‘concealed’ by the new Conservative administration, while sitting next to Councillor Eleanor Macy, the former Chairman of and still a Member of the Working Party is both absurd and untrue.
The contract has now been put out for tender and a number of companies responded. These responses were evaluated against a template agreed by the Working Party and a short list drawn up.
It is important to understand that the contract still does not exist at this time, and we are waiting to hear from those tendering just how they propose to undertake what we want and at what cost. We have also asked then to propose any other solutions to the issues they may have ideas about. Many of them have many years experience in waste collection and already hold contracts with other Councils, or possibly in other countries.
So nothing is yet written in stone. We want to make a final decision on the bidders’ proposals by next February, and there is a lot of work to do between now and then. Much of that will be about communicating with residents. Not only will this be the Council’s responsibility, we will want to work in conjunction with the successful company to ensure everyone knows and understands the new scheme, can ask questions and get answers.
We want a process of education to go to residents through schools and other organisations, and when the time comes to start the new service, which we expect will be done area by area over a period of about 6 months, we want to ensure any snags are dealt with quickly and effectively so that every resident gets individual attention to deliver the best possible service.
One final thing to clear up, Councils are not responsible for the collection and disposal of commercial waste. That is the huge amount of waste material produced by shops factories and businesses. Tesco, Sainsbury and all the others have to contract privately for their waste to be collected and disposed of and our waste contract has nothing whatsoever to do with them.
So, we still have a year to go. I hope the above has put to bed some of the rumours and fears that have been circulating, often deliberately put about by those who should know better. If not, please feel free to ask me or any of my Council colleagues.
This post was written by Cllr Tony Hall.
