Let's have a less wasteful Christmas

Christmas is a time for celebration but also when a vast amount of waste is created. There is all the paper, food waste, packaging, and plastic. This year will be the first when the whole of Redbridge has been served by wheelie bins. The roll out of the wheelie bins has been a tremendous success, as well as making our streets cleaner by containing waste more securely it has increased recycling rates by around 5% - with around a third of our household waste now being recycled. This has been achieved by limiting household waste to what will fit in the wheelie bin and ensuring residents make full use of recycling facilities. Hopefully this will encourage people to create less waste in the first place. A group of councillors recently visited the East London Waste Authorities (ELWA) Renewi facilities in Newham and Ilford to see for ourselves what happens to the borough's waste. Household waste and recycling of Newham, Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge finishes up at these facilities. The waste end up in a giant warehouse type building. The waste then undergoes a treatment where it is shredded and dried out for 14 days, reducing its volume by about 30% with the moisture being pumped into woodchip containers on the roof of the building which biologically filter out odours and bioaerosols. Recyclable materials such as glass and metals that have not been separated by households for separate collection are removed for recycling from the dried waste, as well as organic material which goes on to be composted and used for land restoration. The remaining treated waste (about half of what entered the plant) then goes off to Energy from Waste facilities to create heat and power. The materials for recycling that comes from our boxes ends up at the site on the high road in Ilford. This is another impressive facility, with paper and cardboard dumped in one silo, cans, glass and plastics in another. A meticulous sorting process then takes place before the metals and plastics are crushed into bales and the glass bulked and then sold on for re-use The whole process us about re-using and utilising waste. So there is much positive going on to deal with the borough's waste, and ongoing efforts to reduce emissions and further widen what can be recycled - with the recent addition of plastic pots, tubs and trays to our weekly collections. The visit to the ELWA/Renewi facility was most instructive, and the scale of the operation and volume of waste also drove home the need for us all to be less wasteful. We all need to reflect more on the amount of waste being created and its impact on the planet. Less must always mean more on waste. So heres to a happy, cleaner, greener Christmas.