GAIN’s Aspirations for Surrey’s Municipal Waste Strategy:

· Undertake to make Surrey a beacon county for its Waste Strategy in keeping with its clean, high tech economy.

· Set increasingly ambitious recycling, composting and waste reduction targets. Ensure the flexibility to improve upon them and meet future requirements by avoiding commitments to supply unsorted waste to any major disposal facilities.

· Commit to achieving the requirements of the Landfill Directive without incineration, pyrolysis or gasification in our small and densely populated county.

· Deliver effective and easy to use collection of sorted waste for every resident, learning from best practice.

· Sustain a powerful campaign to inform people of the difference their individual actions can make in sorting and composting their waste.

· Upgrade Civic Amenity Sites to state of the art Recycling Enterprise Parks.

· Update Surrey CC’s contract with SWM such that

v Ambitious recovery targets are achieved through recycling and composting and not incineration

v a network of Recycling Enterprise Parks is developed

v any residual land-filled material is sorted to reduce impacts and stabilised where necessary

v composting facilities with gas capture are built (see page 3)

· Involve local communities from the outset in drawing up your Waste Strategy. Success relies upon informing, listening and working with residents.

· Organise a Surrey Waste Summit to encourage all stake holders (E.g. schools, industry, all tiers of local government, community groups) to become engaged in the role they can play and to forge links between Waste Collection and Disposal Authorities and those involved in the Commercial and Industrial sector.

· Make full use of recycling credits, Landfill Tax credits and Government grants. Be tenacious in persuading the county to reshape the Surrey Waste Management contract. Change is possible.

· Meet very regularly, especially at first, with meaningful involvement of the community in the process. This will help to generate the impetus required to focus and redirect Surrey’s approach to waste.

We look to you to establish a waste strategy for Surrey that will inspire and enable residents to play their part. Please steer the County Council away from incineration and towards a Waste Strategy that has the support of the community.

GAIN’s Service Request

We have given thought to what would help us to be more responsible with our waste. We hope waste service providers will find it useful to receive ideas generated from the perspective of residents and appreciate the constructive spirit within which these ideas are offered.

We wish all Districts/Boroughs to collect sorted waste

· Sorted by householder (once paper mixed, impractical to separate)

· Bio-degradable element out (early priority, implications for facilities)

· Easy to sort (different options to suit varying circumstances of residents)

Organic waste:

Food Waste:

Option 1: Green cone (installed by Council)+ home composting as appropriate

Option 2: Weekly collection. Residents supplied with a slim line, sealed, food waste container with a filter in the lid. Biodegradable bags supplied for lining the container to ease handling. (This would meet forthcoming European requirement for such a service. Suggest UK funding sought to be a testing ground for forthcoming EU Biowaste Directive.)

Garden Waste:

Option 1: Home composting

Option 2: Weekly collection for community composting in season

Dry Recyclables:

Weekly Kerbside Collection from Green Box:

separated in returned plastic bags, eco vehicles

Category 1: cans and plastic (sorted at simple Materials Recovery Facility)

Category 2: newspaper

Category 3: card

Category 4: other paper

Category 5: mixed glass (sorted kerbside by Waste Collection Operatives)

Supermarket Collection Points:

To include: separated glass, quality paper, foil, clothes, shoes, glasses, batteries, carrier bags

Recycling Enterprise Park: (Slyfield)

To include: all the above categories, wood depot, furniture, items for Charity Shops, electrical and electronic goods, other metals, household special waste

Residual Waste:

Weekly Collection of Black/Clear Bag:

Contents undergo Mechanical Biological Treatment to stabilize prior to landfill

Nappies:

Option 1: Heavily subsidised nappy laundering service

Option 2: Black Bag

Incentive scheme for participating households

Publicity and education

Best practice by public bodies and in public spaces

Facilities Required to Deliver this

Closed Vessel Composting

To treat food waste prior to landfill (if required to meet health standards) or low grade “contained” use

Community Composting Facilities

Garden waste for premium compost

Recycling Enterprise Parks

Resource recovery advisers available

Local WRAP initiatives

Materials Recovery Facilities (or Borough/District)

Separation of cans and plastic

For dry recyclables only, excluding paper, not general mixed waste with problems of cross- contamination

Plastic Shredding and Crushing Plant

(or Borough/District)

Processing prior to transport to recycling plant

Mechanical and Biological Treatment Plant

Sized for minimum requirement

To stabilize residual waste prior to high specification landfill NOT burning

Transfer Stations

Toxic and Special Waste Service

Subsidized Nappy Laundering Service

Coordinated with Districts/Boroughs

Publicity and Education

Including waste reduction

Also Promote:

· Subsidy for milk in reusable glass bottles

· Incentives for use of standard-sized reusable glass bottles and jars for other products eg. wine, jam, beer

We fully appreciate that waste service providers will rightly wish to undertake a rigorous assessment of the Best Practicable Environmental Option in determining their policies. We also emphasise that we are not making any suggestions about the location of facilities, which would be a matter for the planning and environmental assessment systems.

We would very much welcome an opportunity to explore our ideas further.