Birmingham Friends of the Earth Action Briefing Dec 98/Jan 99

Guest Feature

Rob Jameson from Birmingham City Council's Environmental Services Department takes the opportunity to say a few words about recycling in Birmingham

A great deal of interest has been rightly shown, in the recycling activities carried out in Birmingham. Concerns have been expressed that the Government's target of 25% of domestic waste to be recycled or composted by the Year 2000, will never be achieved. Birmingham's current recycling rate is 6.39% in 1997/98 which represents about 25-26,000 tonnes of materials.

Birmingham has invested in an intensive 'bring' system, and over 300 recycling sites with containers for various materials are located across the City. These banks are situated for ease of use by the public and are well used. Residents can take a range of materials to these sites.

An alternative to the bring system is to collect recyclable materials from individual households, but kerbside collections are expensive with collection costs in excess of œ100 per tonne often quoted. Much of this cost is in additional vehicle journeys with very small payloads. City-wide schemes have, so far, proved too costly to implement, but Birmingham's bring system is complemented by a limited, but very efficient doorstep collection of paper. This operation is carried out by the Environmental Services Department's workforce and currently covers approximately 70,000 households.

Birmingham has been complimented on its cost-effective recycling schemes in independent reports and the City Council supports the continuation of these schemes. A recycling rate of 6.39% may seem a long way from the target, but when compared with other similar metropolitan authorities, Birmingham is above the average.

Our endeavours to increase the amount of recycling have to be balanced with available resources, and of course, guaranteed markets for the sale of materials when collected. Environmental benefits also need to be considered.

The City Council secured Government funds last year to promote home composting and over 9,000 composters were sold at a subsidised rate to Birmingham residents. Other initiatives currently being pursued are the collection/segregation of green waste for composting, and recycling the residue (bottom ash) from the Tyseley Energy from Waste Plant.

It is disappointing that, despite all our efforts, the amount of waste in the City continues to rise and, in the last two years, increases of more than 5% have occurred. It is clear that we all need to retain our focus on minimisation and reduction before recycling. We will continue to work in partnership with the community to reduce this increase and a recent example of this approach is the 'waste topic group' which has formed part of Birmingham's Local Agenda 21 process. The group has worked very hard to produce an action plan to address some of the issues on waste which concern us all. Projects identified in the plan will now be undertaken to put the ideas into action. If you want a copy of the plan, but more importantly want to take part, please write to me!

Rob James

Head of Contract Management
Environmental Services Department
Ladbrooke House
Bordesley Street
Birmingham B5 5BL