Agenda item

Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy

(To receive a report from Matthew Michell, Senior Commissioning Officer (Waste), which provides the Committee with an opportunity to consider the updated Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy)

Minutes:

The Committee received a report which provided an opportunity to consider and comment on the revised draft of the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy (JMWMS) for Lincolnshire.  Members were advised that a previous consultation draft had come before the Committee in April 2018, and this new version had been revised in line with consultation feedback.  It was reported that the revised draft had been endorsed by the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership subject to some minor modification, with the recommendation that each partner district would formally adopt this JMWMS.

 

Members were advised that the Council had a statutory duty to have a waste management strategy in place, and this had been jointly created with the district councils through the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership.

 

The Committee agreed that they would like to have a summary of changes which had been put forward by the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership, and these were reported as follows:

·         Objective 3 – re-introduction of the word 'consider' so it reads "To consider the introduction of separate food waste collections where technically, environmentally and economically practicable".

·         The Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership were still to add the Foreword to the Strategy.

·         The photos on the front cover would be updated with more up to date images e.g. the energy from waste facility.

·         Some cross referencing would be added in relation to section 7 – "getting our message across"

·         The reference to South Holland District Council's green waste service pilot to be removed as this is now an on-going service

·         South Kesteven District Council to be added to the list of collectors of commercial waste

·         Table 5.13 to updated with tonnages for non-LCC Waste Transfer Stations for 2017/18 figures

·         Page 39 – replace references to Mid-UK with "current contractor" it was felt more appropriate to use this wording rather than including a named operator.

·         Page 46 – Service costs figures table – the updated costs for 2017/18 had now been received from almost all of the districts therefore this would be updated from the 2015/16 information.

·         Page 53 – it was thought it would be beneficial to explain in more detail why communicating with the public was important.

·         Appendix D – this document would be tidied up to remove all names/initials and non-public references.

 

Members were provided with the opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         One councillor commented that she was horrified by how much food she wasted personally, and suggested that when people actually saw how much food they threw away it would prompt them to change their habits.

·         It was confirmed that costs would go up as the amount of contamination went up.  It was important for people to realise that it was not just their bin of recycling that was contaminated, but it could contaminate the whole lorry load.

·         It was noted that plastics could be burnt for energy and it was queried whether this was anything that the LWP was looking into.  It was noted that this was already occurring through the EfW facility, but it was something that the Partnership was looking into.  There were different types of plastics and they provided a good source of energy for the EfW.

·         It was noted that whilst recycling most materials was good, the waste which went in the bin was still providing a function through the EfW.

·         It was noted that there were a number of anaerobic digesters located in the county, however, most of these were dealing with agricultural waste and were not suitable for household waste.  There was only one site in the county handling food waste.  It was thought that if separate food waste collections were introduced more sites would be required to handle this.

 

RESOLVED

 

            That the Environment and Economy Scrutiny Committee endorse the revised Draft Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy subject to the minor modifications described and recommend that that it be adopted by the County Council on 14 December 2018.

Supporting documents:

 

 
 
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