Murky facts and figures for you

According to Councillor John Fletcher, (St Helens) chair of Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority until June 2006, in his introduction to the Joint Municipal Waste Strategy for Merseyside, the area produces 800,000 tonnes of waste every year, of which 700,000 tonnes goes to landfill.

Elsewhere, the report notes that "Recycling and composting targets have been set out in the Government’s ‘Waste Strategy 2000." This stipulates that Authority’s should recycle or compost 25% of household waste by 2005 and 30% by 2010." One of the objectives of the strategy is "To landfill waste only where actions higher up the waste hierarchy [things like waste reduction, re-use, recycling and recovery] are not possible." They're not doing very well on that target, are they?



The 2005 figures show 22% recycling and 78% to landfill in 2005, with no re-use and no residual waste recovery. So have things improved in the last year? I've had a quick look on the internet at the various Merseyside council recycling schemes. Knowsley, "Improving people's lives" (although possibly not the lives of its residents), does no kerbside recycling collections at all, and the only reference to plastics at "recycling centres" is Tesco's plastic bag recycling. Sefton appears to collect no plastics, even at recycling centres. St Helens - "Think Smart, Take Part" - collects no plastics at the kerbside, and it appears that its plastic recycling is only for customers of Asda and Tescos. Wirral collects paper and garden waste at the kerbside, but there's no mention of the website of how you can go about recycling anything else. Liverpool City Council collects no plastics at the kerbside or at its bring-banks, but has just rolled out a new "green bin" scheme.

None of the above will go very far to reaching the strategy targets. But then, why should they bother when they have the whole of Hafod Quarry to fill up with their rubbish?