Local council red tape in Workington, Cumbria, is preventing a greengrocer from recycling his waste, and instead forcing him to use council services to send it all to landfill. They are also adding a £300 fine into the bargain.
Colin Glaister, who is the owner of the Fruit and Veg shop on Oxford Street, was fined by Allerdale Borough Council after he failed to produce a waste transfer note. He was told it was illegal for him to put his vegetables on a compost heap and cardboard on a household recycling site without the notice.
He said: “A £300 fine for recycling waste out of the shop is unfair. Everyone says you should recycle and do your bit. I take all my cardboard to Smurfits. All my fruit and vegetables go on the garden compost heap. We don’t waste them. My uncle takes the cabbages and feeds them to his chickens. I put the potatoes on the compost heap and it goes back into the land. But the council says I am not allowed to do that.
When I asked them what would happen to all my rubbish I was told it would all go to the landfill.”
Mr Glaister, 26, of Salterbeck, is understandably angry about the fine because he was not guilty of fly-tipping.
“If I loaded my van up and disposed of it I would deserve it,” he added. “I am mad that I have been done for recycling.”
Mr Glaister said that, although he has now applied for a bin, he has also written a letter of appeal to the council.
He added: “I think I have been treated unfairly. I said I am sorry I broke the law. I didn’t realise at the time I could do that by recycling. I have been told it is illegal to take the waste off my premises by moving it in my van.
They told me I was breaking the law and that I was supposed to hire a bin off the council. They will empty the bins once a fortnight. That will cost me about £5 a time. The rubbish will be left in my bin for two weeks during the summer. Who wants to smell rotting vegetables every day in the hot weather?”
An Allerdale Council spokeswoman stated that, under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, business owners must show how they dispose of their waste. If they fail to do this they will be issued with a fixed penalty notice. She said that workers at the shop were warned three times before the fine was dished out and that Mr Glaister was visited on April 3 and failed to produce the necessary legal documentation. Officers wrote on April 10 advising of a visit on April 21 at which the documentation would be required.
“The proprietor still failed to provide the necessary legal notice and was therefore issued with a fixed penalty notice,” she added.
“The proprietor has since arranged a contract for waste disposal with the necessary documentation.”
She said it was not the council’s intention to fine people. “The idea is to encourage them to think about who they give their waste to and not to simply choose the cheapest option or dump their rubbish.”
By law, a waste transfer notice has to be produced by a business whenever trade waste is transferred from a business premises to a registered waste carrier or waste disposal operator. The idea behind the notice is obviously a decent one and should combat illegal dumping. However, fining a business which is responsibly disposing of their waste seems ludicrous. Companies taking responsibility for their waste without unnecessary use of council resources surely should be encouraged (as the council spokeswoman suggested). Can the local borough council really need the £300 that badly?
An initiative whereby greengrocers distribute their waste produce as compost to local allotments and council gardens seems to be a brilliant idea. Sadly, maybe it would only work if someone could make money out of it rather than save money.
Posts Tagged ‘Recycling’
GREENGROCER FINED FOR RECYCLING!
New Vision For Old Windows
We’re all familiar with windows, I think it’s fair to say. The concept has definitely proved a popular one and they look like they’re here to stay!
However, with modern window frames being made from PVCu for quite some time now, the increasing number of non-degradable old frames being removed in renewal projects has threatened to become a serious environmental issue. But one company has turned this problem into a success story.
Shredtec Recyclers Ltd, an Oldham-based company with depots across the UK and Ireland, have established an operation to tackle this problem head-on. Dealing purely with the recycling of old PVCu frames, which would otherwise go to landfill, they even pay cash for old frames – so the benefits are not just those to the environment.
“The amount of waste we produce in the UK is phenomenal and, basically, we’re running out of holes!” said Ian Murray of Shredtec. Watch the full Shredtec video online at: http://tinyurl.com/258o35
Tyre Recycling: SITR ON THE CASE
SITR Limited is one of the largest independent privately-owned Recycling Groups in the UK. They have moved their Head Office from Wilmslow to a new Hi-Tech Operational Centre at Midpoint 18 in Middlewich, Cheshire.
The new 22,000 sq ft building marks a significant development for the Group as it continues to develop new and innovative processes to divert waste products from traditional waste streams of landfill and incineration to green recycled uses.
A spokesman for the company confirmed that the new Operation Centre will be for the purpose of tyre recycling and compliments the Group’s other Approved Authorised Treatment Facility Centres in Cheshire, which are fully compliant with the WEEE Regulations and deal with the recycling of Electronic Waste i.e redundant computer, IT equipment, telephone systems etc.
Under a new EU Directive, tyres can no longer be land filled and high volume commercial solutions are desperately required. The local councils are welcoming the new service provision and are encouraging local businesses to use the new facility which should be fully operational within the next few weeks and should help relieve the national tyre dumping epidemic.
The equipment currently being installed is a bespoke solution using the latest technology with specialised machinery from the United States and Canada.
Steel, being an ever shrinking world commodity, can be extracted from the rubber tyres and recycled. The rubber from the tyres can then be reduced to crumbs in a matter of minutes which, in turn, can then be recycled into other products for use in children’s playgrounds, equestrian centres, new road surfaces etc. and, in some cases, a full recycling circle back into new tyres.
Anyone requiring further information can contact SITR Limited on 01606 841183.
THE BEAST WITH A MOTIVE
John Brooke and his wife Lindsay, of John Brooke Sawmills, decided to purchase a Bandit Beast Recycler from Global Recycling for their site in Nottinghamshire.
John ‘hates waste’ and for the last 25 years they have been utilising every scrap of wood and turning it into sawdust, chippings and occasionally logs. But you can never be entirely efficient and John and Lindsay felt that, despite Britain becoming an increasingly environmentally aware place, there was no facility for local people
to turn their waste products into something useful.
Their fifty-acre site is nearing completion and the ‘Beast’ is now hungry and roaring to get to work. It will be used to pull out any metal with a large magnet, which will then go for scrap. The machine will then chip up and digest all the wood or greenery, finishing with a product that can either go right back to the land again as compost or
off to fuel various power stations.
So what’s next in the evolution of John Brooke Sawmills? “To finally make some money” laughs Linda. “In the timber industry the margins are so small that it makes good sense for us to tackle the recycling and environmental side, making good use of waste – because there is a lot of it!”
For further information about the ‘Beast’ contact Global Recycling on 0870 770 8540 or visit their web site at: www.globalrecycling.eu
PLASTIC FANTASTIC
Successful trials of state-of-the-art plastics sorting technology have been completed by Intercontinental Recycling Ltd (IRL) at their plant in Skelmersdale, Lancashire. Installed in October 2007 by German manufacturer Stadler, the plant separates post-consumer plastic bottles into the various polymers for further reprocessing into clean, recycled resources for re-use in various critical applications.
Receiving material from kerbside collections, bring schemes, municipal and commercial collections UK-wide, the Skelmersdale plant compliments IRL’s plastics processing capabilities, as part of a group of companies already successfully operating facilities worldwide.
This places them at the forefront of the resource change culture in the plastics marketplace.
“We have a number of plants around the world,” commented Ravi Chanrai, MD of IRL, “but as each area has a unique waste stream, so all our plants are different. This plant at Skelmersdale consists of two processing lines, each delivering about two tonnes of clean, recycled polymer per hour ready for manufacturing into new products.”
Concerned by the amount of plastic material going to landfill and for export, IRL saw a gap in the market for strategically situated sorting plants for local recyclate collections. Ravi continues, “We are passionate about what we do and have found that exported material is not always separated properly making for a lower category end product.
Recycling plants close to collection and bring points reduces the carbon footprint of the recycled material, which, in our view, makes economic and environmental sense.”
The initial separation phase, critical for producing clean, high quality raw material ready for manufacturing into a wide variety of recycled plastic products, consists of a feeder and incline conveyor to a small sorting house where any large contaminants can be removed from incoming material. Following this, material is passed through magnetic and eddy current separators for the recovery of metals before being transferred to the Stadler manufactured STT 2000 twin-deck ballistics separator.
Ballistics separation is the ideal technology for the sorting of material by size, shape and dimension and gives an even distribution of material in preparation for optical sorting further along the processing line. IRL’s STT 2000 ballistics separator gives a three-way split between flat materials (paper/card/film), screened fines and three-dimensional rolling fraction ready for optical sorting. The rolling fraction is cleaned again on the second screen surface.
Constructed with 6mm steel plate for the side walls and support frame made of 40mm steel plate, the STT 2000 is an extremely robust machine and ideal for light packaging waste; all mixed paper; film and hollow bodies; municipal, commercial and industrial waste.
The machine consists of six longitudinal, rigid and perforated screening paddles forming an inclined table on the top deck and a further six paddles on the bottom deck. The paddles are mounted on crankshafts which move in a circular path relative to each other throwing material upwards and forwards. Depending on the physical properties, material either bounces down the inclined deck (rolling containers) or is carried up the deck (film/paper). The paddles are constructed from 4mm steel with Hardox plating for high wear resistance and can be adjusted manually to suit incoming material. The action of the paddles helps to remove adhesions on materials and the modular shaft design reduces costs for replacement and wear parts.
The rolling fraction at IRL consists of plastic bottles ready for optical sorting by polymer. The flat fractions consist of paper, cardboard, film and other such contaminants and the fine fraction consists of any glass, stone or other small contaminants that may be present.
“We believe everybody in the UK wants to recycle but they want to know the materials they diligently save are being used to produce useful products rather than being exported. The plastics recycling market in the UK can only increase as manufacturers come under ever greater pressure to use more recycled materials,” Ravi explains. “Stadler are a great supplier and we have found their engineering quality and back up service to be excellent,” Ravi concludes.
STT 2000 TWIN-DECK BALLISTICS SEPARATOR
The STT 2000 twin-deck is one in a range of three ballistics separators manufactured with typical German engineering excellence by Stadler. With paddle angle adjustment of between 10° and 25° and two working areas of 8.4m2 each, the STT 2000 twin-deck has a drive output of 2 x 4kW, weighs 8 tonnes and can achieve a throughput rate of 90m3/h.
Stadler, renowned world-wide for their engineering excellence, are manufacturers of turn-key sorting plants for co-mingled recyclables, MSW, RDF, paper/card and plastics; ballistics separation machinery; trommels and conveyers. Stadler offers customers the opportunity to test their material at the Stadler Technology Centre in Altshausen. The material is run through a particular machine and the resulting fractions analysed against the customer’s needs. Wilson Recycling Machinery Ltd is the exclusive UK agent for Stadler machinery.
