Agenda item

In response to Andrew Pau, Ruth Dixon clarified that the national benchmarking data (April 2021 - March 2022) had not been published by Defra yet, so was unavailable for the meeting. In response to Councillor Moira-Anne Grainger, Andrew Pau agreed to circulate the national data to members of the partnership as soon as they are published by Defra. The Warwickshire figures will be put into a report for the next meeting and will be compared with other local authorities. The April 2021 – March 2022 figures will not show the new impact of the 1-2-3 waste collection system in place for Warwick and Stratford as this commenced in August 2022. The impact of the new collection system (Aug 22 – Mar 23) will partly show in the provisional annual figures for April 2022 - March 2023.

The statistics for Local authority collected waste management - annual results 2021/22 were published on 24^th January 2023

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/local-authority-collected-waste-management-annual-results-202122

Andrew Pau highlighted the following points:

·   The performance data report shows the actual tonnages from the first three quarters of this year (April 2022 – Dec 2022) combined with the last quarter from last financial year (Jan 2022 – March 2022)

·   Total household waste decreased by nearly 17,000 tonnes since last year which is good

·   The reduction in residual waste led to the recycling rates increasing despite tonnage decreasing

·   Composting rates were static despite the decrease in tonnage

·   Landfill rates decreased and more waste was sent to energy from waste

·   The estimated performance table for the year 2022-2023 does not forecast the full impact of the new 1-2-3 system in Warwick and Stratford as it uses data from the previous year for quarter 4 (January – March 2022), before the new system was introduced

·   There is a projected increase expected in the recycling, composting and reuse rate to 49.4% in 2022-2023 (compared to 47.9% in 2021-2022), this may increase.

·   It is projected that the kilograms of residual waste per household would decrease to 466 kg (compared to 515 kg in 2021-2022).

·   These performance figures are expected to be comparable with the top quartile of local authorities nationally

·   Recycling at HWRCs is expected to increase from the predicted 54.1%

In response to the Chair, Andrew Pau confirmed the reduction in residual waste across the County demonstrates waste tonnages are returning to pre-Covid levels. People are going out to work and to socialise and this means less waste to collect from the kerbside. In addition, it was a hot and dry summer in 2022 and these conditions have led to a reduction in garden waste.

Councillor Grainger noted that it was disappointing the figures for the 1-2-3 waste collection system were unable to be fully reported as other members and the public wanted to know what difference the new collection system made. Andrew Pau said that Stratford and Warwick have carried out some detailed work looking at the impact of the new 1-2-3 system and have seen reduced tonnages so far; this will be reported when a full year of data is available. Julie Lewis added that only the figures for August 2022 to February 2023 are available to show the impact. Andrew Pau stated that SDC did a press release on the new system and this had some very useful information in it. It was agreed to re-circulate the Press Release to Members.

https://www.stratford.gov.uk/news/press.cfm/current/1/item/137911

Ruth Dixon stated that the County Council predicted the new collection system would generate around 10,000 tonnes of separately collected food waste and this prediction is looking correct.

In response Councillor Tim Sinclair, Andrew Pau agreed to circulate the link showing how energy is generated from food waste using anaerobic digestion. He added that as there is no separate line for food waste in the performance table and that the food waste tonnage is included in the recycling tonnage.

The link showing how food waste is made into energy can be found here: https://www.stgreenpower.co.uk/food-waste-recycling

Ruth Dixon stated that with food waste collections, to procure WCC’s anaerobic digestion facility, they needed to make predictions on how much food waste WCC expected to collect. They guessed 10,000 tons which was pretty accurate. 

In response Councillor Tim Sinclair, Andrew Pau agreed to circulate the link showing how energy is generated from food waste. He added that as there was no separate line for food waste, the collection tonnage is included in the recycling tonnage.

The link showing how food waste is made into energy can be found here: https://www.stgreenpower.co.uk/food-waste-recycling