Bristol Green Capital
Helping to create a Low Carbon City with a High Quality of Life for All
Waste
Section 7 Waste Production & Management chapter summary (draft)
Introduction
Bristol’s residents produce the least amount of waste per person of any major English city and recycle a higher percentage of their waste than most cities. Bristol was one of the first UK major cities to introduce doorstep waste recycling over a decade ago.
What Bristol set out to achieve
The 2 key action plans for waste management and production are the West of England Joint Waste Strategy and the Headline Waste Strategy. BCC has delivered a successful implementation programme to deliver these action plans, including:
2003 Modernised Household Waste Recycling Centres to double the waste recovery rates – now over 75%.
2006 Extended recycling collections to apartment blocks – 38,000 apartments.
2006 Provided weekly food waste collections for centralized composting, extending this to apartments, university halls of residence and schools in 2008.
2006 Introduced a charged-for green waste collection scheme.
2008 Developed a network of 50 mixed plastic bottle recycling sites that now collect over 1,000 tonnes of plastic per annum.
2008 Developed a network of 6 drinks carton (‘Tetra-Paks’) recycling sites, that now collect 65 tonnes of this material per year.
2009 Introduced a small network of on-street recycling bins, to encourage litter recycling.
2010 Piloted kerbside mixed plastic collections to 10% of city and extended the range of materials taken at plastic bottle banks to include mixed plastics.
2011 Commissioned a Mechanical Biological Treatment Plant for 54,000t of residual waste.
2011 Introduced kerbside collections of mixed plastics “Tetra-Paks”.
Amount of waste per person:
- Household – 378kg
- Municipal – 408kg
This is the lowest of any major English city where the average household waste per person is 413kg (2009/10).
Proportion of total/biodegradable waste sent to a landfill:
- Total Waste 62%
- Biodegradable 50%
Percentage of recycled municipal waste:
Some 41.4% of municipal waste is recycled – 2nd highest of the English core cities.
What Bristol has achieved
Reduction of the amount of waste produced
Despite Bristol’s growing population the reduction in waste per person has reduced overall waste by 10%.
The amount of waste sent to landfills
BCC has reduced the amount of waste to landfill from 162kt in 2004/5 to 100kt in 2010/11 – a reduction of 39% while increasing the amount of recycling from 12% in 2004/5 to 23% in 2010/11.
The waste strategy targeted biodegradable waste and achieved:
- An increase in waste collected for composting from 1% to 16%
- An reduction from 110kt of biodegradable waste (80%+) landfilled in 2004/5, down to 55kt (50%) 2010/11
- All targets set for the amount of biodegradable waste that should be sent to landfill
- Two Household Waste Recycling Centres allowing free recycling/ disposal of a wide range of wastes including WEEE, stone, wood and asbestos. The sites have doubled their recycling rates since 2002/3 to 70% in 2010/11
- The commissioning of a mechanical Biological Treatment plant, which opened in April 2011, for 50% of the city’s residual waste, increasing recycling and producing a product for energy recovery.
How the disposal of household waste has changed over the last decade
Measures that have promoted awareness raising programmes
In 2001 an estimated 50% of households participated in recycling. By 2006 that had increased to 80-85%. Since 2006 communication work has been focused on:
§ Evaluation of 2009’s ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, which included leaflets, a food diary competition and roadshows, showed food waste had been reduced and food waste recycling increased
§ BCC’s schools education officer works to educate and enthuse children and ensures that schools have access to all BCC services, such as food waste and free compost bins. All Bristol’s 163 schools now have recycling and food waste collections:
- Apartment blocks where recycling rates were low. BCC commissioned a communication programme which involved visiting every household as well as providing over 700 mini-recycling centres, serving 32,000 households. Over three years, the amount of recycled per household increased by 77%.
- Communities new to the city, students or black and minority ethnic communities – additional Government finance enabled the national pilots of communications for target groups including linking recycling to Islamic teaching and practices.
- Difficult waste streams such as disposable nappies by offering a discount on the purchase of reusable nappies. Approximately 400 of these vouchers are given out each year.
Social enterprises have played a key role in helping to engage residents both in reducing the amount of waste disposed of and increasing the amount of waste diverted from landfill. Local organisations include:
- Bicycle recycling projects, eg. Bike Back
- IT reuse / recycling, e.g. Bristol Computer Recycling, Byteback Computer Recycling, Computers For Life
- Furniture reuse, e.g. Emmaus Bristol, Kingswood Furniture Project, Restore, SOFA Project, Space Trust
- Children’s Scrapstore: Takes commercial waste “scraps” to be reused by children, schools, etc.
- WEEE reuse and recycling, e.g. SOFA Project.
What are Bristol’s areas of weakness?
Lack of Anaerobic digestion and energy from waste programmes (compared to some European countries)
Constraints & Disadvantages
- The majority of UK waste legislation stems from EU directives
- The key difference between the way waste is managed in the UK and in Europe is that in the UK, local authorities only have a statutory duty to collect household waste and not commercial waste, as other European countries do
- The UK as a whole has had a much higher reliance on landfill than elsewhere in western Europe and a limited deployment of energy from waste.
Bristol’s plans for the future
BCC has set further targets to:
- Reduce waste by 15% per household.
- Increase recycling to 50% by 2017/18.
- Treat all residual waste, for example by MBT, to have zero untreated waste to landfill by 2013.
These exceed local, regional, national and international targets.
The strategy is being implemented and key delivery mechanisms are now in place, including:
- Source segregated kerbside recycling of mixed plastics and waxed beverage cartons.
- Mechanical and biological treatment for residual waste to remove recyclable materials (estimated 25%) and to produce a product suitable for energy recovery.
- Further improvements to the Household Waste Recycling Centres
- Agreed customer service targets for the new waste contractor (appointed 2011) to increase customer satisfaction and therefore participation.
- Agreed quantity targets with the new waste contractor as part of their contract with penalties for the contractor if they do not meet them and benefits sharing with the Council if they over perform. These targets are as follows:
| Year | Household recycling & composting % |
| 2011/12 | 38.84% |
| 2012/13 | 46.27% |
| 2013/14 | 47.34% |
| 2014/15 | 47.98% |
| 2015/16 | 48.72% |
| 2016/17 | 49.40% |
| 2017/18 | 50.05% |
Continual Improvement:
As well as the aspiration to move beyond these targets via above actions, Bristol City Council will also continually review and improve its services further including:
- Monitor technology and markets for plastic film such as carrier bags (currently limited) to develop plastic film recycling schemes as soon as feasible.
- The UK’s first sanitary waste (e.g. disposable nappies) recycling plant recently opened in the West Midlands and is already at capacity. Bristol City Council will review these with a view to try and divert this waste type from landfill as options become available.
Innovation
Bristol has assessed the carbon footprint of waste collection activities and discovered that it accounted for approximately 5% of its operational emissions.
To reduce this BCC has required the new waste collection contractor to achieve targets to reduce the carbon footprint of waste collection by 10% in year one and 32% by 2017/8, despite providing more services. There are financial penalties for the contractor if they fail to achieve these targets.