Photo by Alan Lodge

In the2004/2005 financial year, Nottingham achieved just 14% of waste recycled (with an 8.72% recycling and 5.28% composting rate), This ranked it 341st out of 393 English councils. Interestingly, nearby Rushcliffe came sixth with a total of 46 per cent. This begs the question, why is Nottingham’s recycling rate so poor?

One reason appears to be a lack of efficient recycling schemes within Nottingham. From personal experience, I know that of the 3 different places I have lived in Nottingham (Sneinton, St Anns and now Carrington), there has not been a single kerbside recycling scheme available to me, such as the one that is employed in Rushcliffe. As the Rushcliffe Borough Council website states: ‘Virtually every household in Rushcliffe now has three bins: green for compostable garden waste, blue for recyclable materials (plastic bottles, cans, paper and card), and a grey bin for other household waste.’

The City Council has been running a similar scheme for the past four years which has been expanded annually, however it still does not even reach half of Nottingham city homes. The ‘brown bin scheme’, which is used to collect compostable garden waste and paper (in a separate plastic bag), currently incorporates, according to the City Council website, some 42,000 homes within the Nottingham city boundaries; around a third of all properties. It covers various areas from Clifton to Wollaton and St Anns to Sherwood, amongst others, but it does not stretch to a unified area across the city.

The problem, however, arguably lies not in these schemes themselves, but rather in the awareness, or lack of, them. Phil Green, the Recycling Officer for Nottingham City Council, said when asked about this lack of awareness that the Council only sends out literature concerning the schemes to those residents that it directly affects. This makes sense, to an extent, but surely literature such as leaflets and brochures concerning recycling in general could be more widely circulated around the city by the council? An example might be to produce a leaflet/brochure in conjunction with a prominent environmental agency listing the importance of recycling; what schemes are running in Nottingham and how the council proposes to expand them; how to do more yourself, and how business’s can increase their recycling to help reduce the amount of commercial waste being produced.

Nottingham residents outside the Council House - photo by Alan Lodge

A more contentious issue that deserves consideration lies in the provisions set out by the Environmental Protection Act of 1990. Under the act, county councils are obliged to contract out the provision of waste management to the private sector. One such company that the city council uses for dealing with municipal waste is the Waste Recycling Group (WRG), which owns the Eastcroft incinerator near Trent Bridge. At present, the incinerator runs on two lines that were built in 1972 but were designed in the 1960’s, thus making them virtually obsolete by the time of construction. WRG propose to build a third line in order to burn more municipal waste, which will increase incinerated waste in Nottingham to 260,000 tonnes per annum (tba), a 100,000 tba increase from current levels. However, the proposed third line will not be a modern design, but rather will be identical to the other two, which have had 28 known (levels are self-regulated and self-reported to the Environmental Agency by the companies that own incinerators) pollution breaches in the past four years, and in 2002 was rated by Greenpeace as the fifth worst incinerator in the UK.

The Eastcroft Incinerator - photo by George Marshall

Nottingham Against Incineration and Landfill (NAIL) was set up in 2002 and is vehemently opposing the expansion. Citing examples such as the pollution breaches mentioned above as well as the health and environmental implications this has for Nottingham City residents, and Nottinghamshire county in general; that the expansion will hinder the improvement of recycling within Nottingham, as the incinerator is required to run at full capacity (i.e. it is able to burn 100% of municipal waste, including those things that could be recycled); and that WRG will be required to import waste from Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire and/or more commercial and industrial waste in order to meet the 100,000 tba increase, amongst many others (for an extensive list of the points of opposition, visit the NAIL website and see their letter of opposition to the City Council Planning Officer. 

Both recycling schemes and awareness, could be severely set back by the expansion, for if more municipal, commercial and industrial waste is to be incinerated, then there is less to be recycled. If we reduce the amount of recyclable waste through incineration, schemes and necessary awareness will inevitably be stunted as a result.

Clearly, WRG have a profit incentive to expand Eastcroft Incinerator in that they will be paid to burn more waste. What is less clear, however, is why the council are potentially supporting the expansion. Planning permission is yet to be granted while the submission is under review (a decision is expected around April of this year), but one would argue that it is only through the hard work of NAIL and local residents that the expansion has been delayed at all. Considering that Central Government has set local targets for recycling to be at least 50% by 2015, if the City Council is to give planning permission for the expansion, this surely would be antithetical to their presumed commitment to such targets.

For more information about the issues mentioned within this article, see:
Nottingham Against Incineration and Landfill
Lets Recycle
DEFRA
Office of the Deputy Prime minister
Nottingham City Council
Nottinghamshire County Council

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