Case Study- Waste Management
Delivery of priority services and outcomes
To have a high quality, clean and sustainable environment Reduce CO2 emissions from our own operations
To increase recycling
Reduce the residual waste going to landfill Reduce the trade waste going to landfill Improve street and environmental cleanliness
Background
The Waste Management unit is the largest in Ryedale District Council (RDC). It operates under a two-tier arrangement regarding collection and disposal of waste. RDC is the statutorily
appointed Waste Collection Authority (WCA) and North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) is the Waste Disposal Authority (WDA).
All WCA’s and WDA’s within North Yorkshire are part of a Waste Management Partnership operating under a service level agreement regarding performance against delivery of waste management targets. Since 2005 RDC has led the North Yorkshire Partnership regarding recycling performance.
The operational base for all waste management is Malton depot, which is relatively central to the large rural area covered. The operation is virtually self-contained with vehicle maintenance, finance and administration being undertaken in house. The operational area covered stretches for almost 600 square miles increasing costs of collection.
RDC committed to reaching high recycling performance as far back as 2003 successfully attracting over £1.2 million through external funding bids from Yorventure and DEFRA to fund the implementation of an alternate weekly kerbside collection system for green waste, residual refuse and dry recyclables (paper, glass and cans) throughout Ryedale. The scheme was both ambitious (for a small rural authority) and contentious at the time, regarding service delivery (a
number of alternate weekly schemes having been derailed). The basis of the scheme derived from benchmarking best practice analysis, in regard to waste minimisation, low cost, high levels of participation and ability to generate high levels of recycling.
RDC has set up a large infrastructure of local farmers to compost garden waste on agricultural land in order to reduce collection costs and in addition has facilitated local arrangements with private disposal companies with regards to glass, cans, paper and plastic bottle processing. Both these options take advantage of the BPEO and the proximity principle regarding material haulage.
What was done
RDC has consistently improved on its recycling performance year on year, maintaining its position, as the top recycler in the Yorkshire and Humber region and as one of the top recycling authorities in England, currently placed 13th in the league tables with a recycling rate of over 53%.
To ensure maximum efficiency, collection crews work 37 hours a week over 4 days. This ensures that down time lost through additional travel to far out locations is minimised and reduces the number of vehicles required to deliver the service. The council has minimal complaints indicating high levels of service reliability and regularity.
RDC is one of the few who have removed task and finish completely from the operation, to reduce risk regarding Health and Safety, enhance service standards and encourage team working.
RDC offers the same recycling service to all properties irrespective of location and difficulty of access, and a back door collection service to the elderly or infirm, on request.
RDC has signed up to the WRAP’s Waste Collection Commitment.
However, though RDC is upper quartile for both NI 197 and NI 192, satisfaction with refuse and recycling has not improved.
% residents satisfied with refuse collection – 72.7%, ranked 256th
out of 354 local authorities % residents satisfied with doorstep recycling – 64.1% ranked 289th
out of 354 local authorities
Further in depth analysis of the Place Survey was undertaken to try and answer the following questions
Are our rural communities more dissatisfied than the market towns? Is having alternate weekly collections affecting the levels of satisfaction?
Could it be the range of items collected for recycling that has impacted on satisfaction? Is the method of collection whereby residents have to sort the waste into separate bins &
bags affecting satisfaction?
The Place Survey results were broken down by Ward to highlight whether any Wards are more dissatisfied than others. In addition the comments field from the questionnaires of the Place Survey were analysed to identify whether any of the comments were related to waste collection and recycling. The top recycling Councils in the country (all AWC) were identified together with their collection methods, range of items recycled and levels of satisfaction achieved
Analysis indicates that the Wards with the most dissatisfaction were the market towns of Malton, Pickering and Helmsley proving that rurality was not an issue. The main issue was clearly the lack of cardboard and plastics in the kerbside collection scheme, complaints regarding alternate weekly collection being the second most popular comment.
General indications are that AWC schemes have lower levels of satisfaction than weekly schemes. Satisfaction seems better in those authorities that have both a wider range of recycling products collected and simple collection systems such as the three-bin system. To change back to a weekly collection system would be a retrograde step, increasing costs, reducing recycling and increasing waste tonnage. To improve, RDC will need to consider extending the current recycling scheme to include cardboard and plastics. However, changes cannot be implemented until the vehicle fleet starts to fall out in 2011/12. The Council is
currently in discussions with stakeholders regarding alternative solutions, which could minimise cost and enhance collection methods. However, any changes have revenue, capital and increased CO2 implications and RDC faces difficult decisions in the light of budget cuts next
year.
Who was involved and how?
Over the years staff, Members, residents, North Yorkshire Waste Partners, traders etc have all been involved with the scheme. Methods of communication included:
A manned information unit in each area prior to implementation to explain the scheme and deal with local issues.
A dedicated in-house team, to ensure accuracy and officers on the ground to ‘walk the talk.’ Questionnaires to householders regarding feedback.
Dealt directly (face to face) with individual enquires for information or complaints. Open public meetings.
Focus groups.
Presentations for members and staff. School talks.
Support with Partnership activities within Ryedale and also other Districts What was achieved?
RDC has made good progress towards achieving the Government’s 2020 target of 225kg of residual waste per capita and has exceeded the Governments 2020 recycling target for the 3rd year running achieving 53.1% (2008/9).
Performance in 2009/10 remains strong. The high performance has meant that an additional £30K has been paid to RDC as part of an SLA Waste Partnership incentive bonus in
addition to recycling credits.
RDC has been the top performer in the Yorkshire and Humber region for 5 years running, for both NI 197 residual waste and NI 192 recycling.
RDC is top quartile for NI 197 and NI 192.
RDC is ranked 13th place in England’s recycling league tables
In the PWC detail For Economy and Environment, RDC comes out as 2nd in the family group and top of Yorkshire and Humber region.
The service has one of the highest recycling performances in the UK - with all the expenditure that this entails, yet is below average in terms of the service cost.
To improve satisfaction the Council needs to re- consider its methods of kerbside collection to coincide with the vehicle renewal programme.
Benefits and Value for money
SPARSE Analysis: indicates that the service has high levels of recycling performance (53.1%) with lower than average running costs. This is exceptional given the rurality issues and
Alternate weekly collection effectively reduces cost, increases recycling tonnage, encourages waste minimisation and promotes long-term sustainability and affordability. The network of local farmers who on- farm compost garden waste help to reduce vehicle
miles, CO2 and enhance efficiency. Vehicle miles saved by comparison to composting at a
central location are estimated at 12,831 miles per year.
SPARSE analysis indicates that the service has reduced its running costs from 23.21 (2008/9) to 22.58 (2009/10) per capita, a 7% reduction. This has been achieved through;
o Overtime savings
o Enhanced operational planning
o Increased recycling of street cleansing waste and reducing biodegradable waste to landfill - leading to reducing NYCC’s Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme risk and ensuring cleaner roads and streets.
o Over 50% of the LGV fleet is now equipped with the latest Euro 5 engines with ad-blue additive, for enhanced efficiency and reduced emissions (estimated at 4.5% reduction). All others run with particulate traps.
o RDC has reduced the frequency of garden waste collections over the winter period. Moving to monthly garden waste collections during winter months (when tonnage reduces) has the potential to increase bin set out rates enhancing efficiency, reducing collection costs and reducing CO2 emissions, through potential savings in fuel, mileage,
overtime and longer term staffing efficiencies. 8677 miles saved
£13,910 saving
42.07 tonnes carbon saved Future savings
£24K
o In periods of bad winter weather RDC has an agreement with NYCC to grit footpaths, roads etc as required. In such periods RDC utilises waste management operatives who cannot fulfill their normal duties.
York & North Yorkshire Waste Partnership:
RDC is a member of the York and North Yorkshire Waste Partnership. The Partnership has a strategy (Let’s Talk Less Rubbish), which was adopted in 2006 and provides a common set of objectives and targets over the next twenty years. This includes commitments to achieve various joint targets, including a recycling/composting diversion rate of 50% by 2020 and a reduction in the growth of household waste arisings per head of population to zero % by 2008, targets which RDC has already met.
The Partnership has developed a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between NYCC and the seven WCA’s (excludes York) which sets out minimum performance levels.
The Partnership works together to develop and promote waste minimisation campaigns (e.g. Love Food, Hate Waste; Real Nappies etc).
The partnership works together to promote and deliver subsidized home composting for sustainable waste management. Ryedale District Council (RDC) provides a 240 litre wheeled bin to all domestic premises for garden waste, but encourages residents to
compost, as a first choice. It is also possible for residents to take extra garden waste to their nearest Household Waste & Recycling Centre for recycling. RDC has always promoted home composting as the preferred option for dealing with garden waste produced by residents and as an excellent and practical way to help combat climate change.
In addition RDC through the partnership offers other products that can deal with kitchen, as well as garden waste. These include Green Cones, a range of Wormeries, Bokashi units and kitchen caddies for collecting kitchen waste.
The Partnership identified areas where service improvement and increased efficiency gains can be realised through improved collaboration and harmonisation of systems and has attracted Regional Improvement & Efficiency Partnership funding to explore these areas further. Areas of investigation include:
Setting up a Partnership-wide arrangement for clinical waste. The key benefits would be a consistent approach to this service across the area with a more secure and economic method of collection.
Establishing protocols for sharing best practice
A review of commercial waste, encompassing the potential of selling off the service. A comprehensive review of the kerbside recycling collection systems in use with the aim of
achieving higher Partnership performance and value for money. This is an area, which RDC is keen to explore regarding improvement in satisfaction levels.
Recycling Street Cleansing Waste This innovative pilot was set up late 2008 with NYCC and a local farmer. The purpose was to trial the composting of street cleanings collected by RDC’s mechanical sweepers during the winter period, mixed in with the collection of leaf fall. This scheme was developed further in 2009/10, composting street cleaning material collected throughout the year, mixed in with garden waste collected from domestic collection rounds.
PAS 100 quality has been maintained throughout the period, realising environmental benefits regarding reduction in biodegradable material to tip and savings in CO2 emissions.
The scheme has been rolled out to other farms regarding the composting of leaf fall, enhancing efficiency regarding reduced road miles in particular benefiting the more rural areas due to the proximity of the farm to collection areas.
The scheme has allowed RDC to continue to make gains regarding its recycling Give or Take Days:
RDC first piloted and then developed a programme of Give or Take days around the District. Utilising the support of local environmental groups the purpose of the events are for residents to pass on such items, such as bric-a-brac, clothing, electricals or furniture, and pick something up they need, for free. The events have been a great success and encouraged other Local
Authorities to run some of their own. The latest event has just been held in Pickering. Next Steps / Further Action
Exploration of partnership working with Food & Environment Research Agency (FERA). The intention is for FERA to build an anaerobic digester for scientific analysis. The project is at concept stage but the intention would be for them to work in partnership with RDC to run a food waste pilot.
RDC intends to reorganise rounds using Route Smart technology. Initial investigation has highlighted areas where savings in vehicle miles/CO2 emissions could be made.
RDC is currently developing a project with NYCC regarding joint use of vehicle maintenance facilities, effectively aimed at bringing maintenance for NYCC vehicle fleet and RDC vehicle fleet together under one management structure at RDC’s depot.
RDC is investigating the potential of enhancing the current kerbside collection scheme to include plastic bottle and cardboard collection.
RDC is considering the future development of commercial waste regarding sale of the business or expansion of its existing trade recycling service.
Author and Contact Details
Phil Long , Head Of Environment, [email protected] 01653 600666 ext 461. Date of publication
13 March 2010
Background documents/Links: Links to publications – media coverage Committee reports
Impact Assessment
Community Engagement Outcomes or reports Partner websites
