The Cabinet Member for Environment, Councillor Tim Valentine, will set out future provisions for waste collection and street cleansing. 

Councillor Tim Valentine, Cabinet Member for Environment, introduced this item which sought to raise awareness that the current Mid Kent Waste contract was due to end in October 2023 and the work that has already started in preparation for the new contract, and to seek the views of the Committee.  The current contractors also provided the street cleansing functions at Swale. 

The current contract has a fully ‘co-mingled’ collection where all recycling is collected within a single wheeled bin.  The disposal authority prefer the ‘twin-stream’ collection method, whereby paper and cardboard are collected separately to the other recycling, although this system would require an additional container for Swale residents. 

Members were generally against the prospect of additional bins as residents already complained that they had to store and separate waste into different bins.  One possible solution was inserts for existing bins, although that then reduced the space of other recyclables.  It was noted that cardboard could already be folded up and placed alongside the recycle bin for collection. 

Members discussed air quality and the potential to introduce cleaner and greener waste collection freighter as part of a new contract.  Members raised issues around the costs of more expensive freighters, the length of the contract and how soon these ‘greener’ freighters would become obsolete, new technologies such as liquid natural gas and hydrogen as greener fuel sources, and reliability of whatever mode of freighter used. 

Food waste recycling had always been a big challenge for Swale and by 2023, every house in England must be able to recycle food waste.  The vast majority of houses in Swale already have this option and campaigns have been undertaken to reduce the amount of food waste created in the first place to increase the number of households in the Borough that separate food waste if created. 

Issues discussed included encouragement for home composting and providing compostable bags to encourage more use of the waste caddies.     

Contamination in wheelie bins affects recycling figures and costs much more to dispose of.  Food waste, garden waste, textiles, black plastic bags and used nappies were all items that regularly get placed in the recycling incorrectly leading to collections being rejected by the disposal authority. 

Members considered that the only means of tackling this was educating those who were not placing certain items in the correct bins. 

On street cleansing, members said they regularly reported overflowing bins, although this seemed to be a problem more in the rural than town areas and fly tipping was a big issue.  Some incidences of fly tipping took longer to deal with than others, especially where highways management needed to be put in place to enable operatives to work safely or when evidence was being sought on who was responsible for the illegal tipping.  Many of the parish councils present reported incidences of fast food wrappers being discarded in rural areas, many miles away from outlets.  It was noted that the Kent Association for Local Councils and the national body had a campaign under way to force fast food outlets to print the registration number of customers cars on packaging at point of sale.  On the positive side, some fast food outlets were very responsive to requests to undertake litter picks in the vicinity of their premises.