Part of my role with Hampshire County Council now involves being responsible for the waste and recycling functions of the Council.
The County Council is responsible for processing and disposing of waste. The borough, city and district councils are responsible for the collection of waste.
So, it's to County Council sites that your waste is taken once it's collected from your bin.
I was fortunate enough to be taken recently to see the journey that waste takes. It's fascinating. Recyclables are processed through Material Recycling Facilities, the main ones being near Alton and Portsmouth. There the recycling is sorted, processed and transferred for re-use elsewhere. What was shocking watching the waste going through the system were the number of items needing removal that could not be recycled.
Hampshire, as everyone knows, is behind the curve in terms of recycling. I completely understand how frustrating it is to see other areas of the country where much more can be recycled and to see those items go into your black bin here.
The reason is the infrastructure in place to process the waste. Hampshire was an early adopter of recycling and our facilities in place in the late 1990s which were cutting edge at the time. However, now they have been surpassed by more sophisticated systems able to process a much wider range of material.
For that reason we are building a new Materials Recycling Facility in Eastleigh which will enable the recycling of very many more items, including tetra paks and plastics. The site will be fully operational in 2025, although Test Valley will begin the introduction of those collections in 2024.
Waste that cannot be recycled currently is not sent to landfill. Instead it it sent to be burnt for energy at facilities in Basingstoke and Marchwood. I visited the Chineham facility in Basingstoke too. Again, the visit was fascinating, learning how the right mix is achieved to maximise energy production, minimise residue and how the output is cleaned to ensure its emissions are safe and do not damage the environment.
Even the ash from the incinerator is processed to reclaim any useful material and recycle it for other uses (like surface material for car parks for exmaple). This results in less than 5% of waste in Hampshire ending up in landfill.