Medway M ATT E R S
T H E C O U N C I L M AG A Z I N E F O R E V E RYO N E I N M E D WAY
February/March 2012
Food for thought as council trials caddys A pilot project has begun to improve recycling collections from homes lacking space for a wheelie bin. Target areas, selected on location, housing type and where it isn’t possible to fit a wheelie bin, will already have received two new food waste containers. Residents who are part of the trial will now have a 23 litre brown food waste bin, a five litre silver kitchen caddy and a roll of compostable liners to get them started. Once the kitchen caddy is full, the liner can be tied and placed in the brown food waste bin for safe storage before being placed outside the house on collection day. Residents elsewhere can use brown wheelie bins to recycle food waste, which can be wrapped in a compostable liner or newspaper first. In the UK some 6.7 million tonnes of food are thrown away each year. Much of this ends up in landfill sites, which contributes to climate change. The food waste is converted into compost before being spread on local farms as a fertiliser. Medway Council, in partnership with the EU funded Inspirer project, has selected 3,500 homes in parts of Chatham, Luton, Strood and Brompton for the food waste collection trial. n For more on recycling food waste visit www.medway.gov.uk/foodwaste
Why food waste recycling is a good idea? l
By using the food waste bin it stops animals ripping open black sacks, spilling contents across the street.
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It helps keep processing costs down. Composting in this way is cheaper than sending to landfill.
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Unwanted food will not go to waste. Converted into compost it is used on local farmland helping fruit and vegetables to grow.
What can I put in my food caddy?
Recycle those messages this Valentine’s day If you’re ready to cast off those old love letters and anonymous Valentine cards, why not shoot Cupid’s arrow in the direction of your blue recycling bags. Paper is one of the easiest materials to recycle. And by keeping your paper and cardboard separate residents are helping Medway Council to save around £1 million of taxpayers money. That’s because, if separated, it no longer needs expensive equipment to remove paper and cardboard from other materials. Separated paper/cardboard is placed in one of eight recycling collection vehicles. These vehicles have a divider in the back
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www.medway.gov.uk
to keep it all separate. The materials are taken to the transfer station in Strood, where it is bulked up into larger vehicles and taken to a local paper processing plant where it is: • sorted and graded into different paper types.
It can take around seven days for a newspaper to go through the recycling process and be transformed into recycled newsprint, which is used to make the majority of Britain’s national daily newspapers. n For more on recycling in Medway visit www.medway.gov.uk/recyclenow
• added to water and then turned into pulp. • screened, cleaned and de-inked through a number of processes until it is suitable for papermaking. • made into new paper products such as newsprint, magazines, cardboard, packaging, tissue and office items.
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