Tag Archives: environment

Councillor’s Report April 2024 – Councillor Rich Lehmann

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It would be remiss of me not to write something about the subject which has been the talk of Swale for the past month – bins.

The problems we’ve seen with late, or in many cases entirely missed, collections across large parts of the borough have understandably generated a significant volume of calls to our customer service team and calls and emails to councillors. They have also generated a significant number of posts and comments on Facebook.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience and distress that this service has caused across the borough during the past month. The switchover has clearly been a failure, although possibly not to the degree that many would believe. There are large parts of the borough that have received a ‘perfect’ service so far, and it is primarily the rural areas which have been missed (in many cases consistently). I’d like to share the reasons why this is, and what Suez have been, and are continuing to do, to remedy the situation.

Firstly, to respond to a question which I’ve seen raised, the reason we no longer have a contract with Biffa is simply that the contract we had with them expired. Along with our partners in Ashford and Maidstone, we put out a tender and Suez were the only company to bid for that contract.

More on this can be read online at www.tinyurl.com/SBCwaste

Some general reasons why the rounds are currently taking longer include:

New routes – the routes have been redrawn to be more efficient and resilient in the long term. We have more vehicles out in the same parts of the borough on the same day. This means that when a crew member is suddenly unable to work, (this work has a higher rate of injury than most), or there is a vehicle breakdown, we have other vehicles nearby who can pick up the rest of that round. The completion of the new routes will get faster and more efficient with practice, but it may take a few weeks.

New processes – the crews now have handheld devices which can be used to register which properties have been collected from and which haven’t. This additional piece of work may slow crews down as they get used to it, but in the long term will bring benefits in terms of more accurate data and a greater ability to send crews out to missed areas without them needing to be reported by the public.

The main reason the rural rounds have been hit disproportionately is that the new routes have not been assigned as efficiently as they should have been in terms of areas served by narrow lorries and those that have full-size lorries. There are large parts of the borough which can easily be navigated by the larger trucks and were under the previous contract. Suez have acknowledged this and are making changes to the routes to switch more properties and areas onto the full-size trucks. This will greatly improve their ability to complete collection rounds.

Suez have also employed a number of new staff, both on the driver side and the loader side, and this week, (week beginning 15th April), we are beginning to see the effect of those additional staff and a much greater proportion of collections being completed on the scheduled day. I am hopeful that this trend will continue and that we will reach a state of normal service by early to mid-May.

Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk
https://kentgreencouncillors.news/

Promoted by T. Valentine on behalf  of R.Lehmann (Swale Green Party) c/o PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ

KCC Councillor’s Report February 2024

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Rich Lehmann

Following on the theme of the piece I wrote last month, at Swale Borough Council it’s all systems go in preparation for the new waste collection contract which is coming in late March.

I was hoping to have included information about which days resident’s bins would now be emptied on a parish by parish basis, but a few additional, last minute changes to the routes meant that sadly this was not possible. I can, however, say that letters are being sent out to every household from mid-February, so you should have received one by the time you read this.

The new collection dates will take effect from Monday 25th March, so please stick to your current collection dates until that point.

As I also mentioned last month, we will be doing our best to improve rates of collection not only of dry recycling, but also of food waste. This is something that has numerous benefits, including helping to keep your bins less smelly and your green bin cleaner and reducing the cost of disposing of waste for our councils. The food waste collected separately from household rubbish is turned into compost, which is great for the environment.

If you don’t already have them, you can order both orange and black ‘kerbside’ food waste bins, and small silver food waste bins for your kitchen on the Swale Borough Council website by going to the following link – http://tinyurl.com/swalefoodwaste

Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk
https://kentgreencouncillors.news/

Kent County Councillor’s Report January 2024

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Rich Lehmann

In late November I had the chance to visit a place I’d been wanting to see for years. Nothing as exciting as the Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House though, this was a visit to the Material Recycling Facility in Crayford where all of our dry recycling is sorted to be sent on for recycling and re-use.

Way back in 2017 when I was involved with the Plastic Free Faversham campaign group, I visited the incinerator at Allington where our rubbish is burned to generate electricity, and on another occasion we visited the site where our food and garden waste is turned into compost. I never managed to make it to the place which arguably held the answer to the most frequently asked questions around our household waste. Questions like ‘how clean does food packaging need to be before it’s put in the recycling?’ (quite clean, but it doesn’t need to be spotless), ‘can black plastic actually be recycled now?’ (sometimes), and ‘can I put tetrapak cartons in the recycling?’ (sadly, not at the current time, but soon!).

The visit was prompted in part by the fact that Swale Borough Council is about to start a new contract for household waste collection. From late March, our bins will all be collected by Suez instead of Biffa, and our collection days may change – a letter will be going out to all households in the coming weeks to confirm whether your collection day will be the same or not, and I will aim to provide this information in the piece I write next month if I can.

The new contract gives us a chance to try and redouble our efforts to improve the rates of dry recycling we collect across Swale which, over the last few years, have remained fairly flat and well below where they could potentially be.

There are two issues which cause our recycling rates to be lower than they could. The first is the more obvious one, that people are putting perfectly recyclable items in their household waste. The second, less obvious but more harmful one, is that residents are putting non-recyclable items into their blue recycling bins. This is far more problematic as it can cause entire lorry loads full of recyclable waste to be rejected when they reach the transfer station in Sittingbourne, which means (literally) tons of paper, plastic and glass is sent for incineration rather than recycling.

On the same day as the visit to Crayford, we visited the transfer station at Sittingbourne and saw two lorry loads of recycling unloaded. Unfortunately both loads were rejected as the levels of contamination within them were too high. Most of the items responsible for the loads being rejected were clearly not appropriate to go into the recycling. There were used disposable nappies, an old pillow, and a large amount of the material was shiny and stuck together with something that may have been used cooking oil.

A large part of our work in the coming years will be trying to get the message out about the harm putting non-recyclable items in your blue bin, and our comms team have already put together a video with footage filmed at the transfer station – http://tinyurl.com/sbc1223

Officers within the council often use the term ‘dry recycling’ when referring to the materials that are suitable to go into blue bins, and I think if we could use this term publicly more often it may help to shift perceptions a little and start to reduce this problem.

Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk

Promoted by T. Valentine on behalf  of R.Lehmann, A.Gould & T.Thomson (Swale Green Party) c/o PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ