Waste levels still rising in Durham and 'need tackling'

Durham County Council's environment scrutiny committee was told of increasing levels of waste and contaminated recycling.

Tom Gorman, corporate scrutiny and strategy manager, said: "The overall tonnage of waste is increasing.

"That's due to the pandemic but also an increase in housing stock in County Durham.

"We have over 3,000 more houses in County Durham in comparison with previous years so that'll obviously have an effect as well."

He said a smaller percentage of waste was being recycled: "The tonnage of recycling has gone up, but the actual percentage of overall waste has dipped.

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"There's a larger percentage of recycling which is contaminated. The contamination percentage is running at over a third now, 35%."

He said the cost of this from penalties by contractors and removing the contamination was £188,000 over a 10-month period.

He added: "We have been taking enforcement action against that contamination in terms of issuing notices to households who continually contaminate their recycling bin.

"I think the key issue of course is to tackle it at source and try and reduce that little contamination through education and enforcement.

"But it is an issue that has been seen to be growing over the last few years."

He said flytipping was also up and they were taking more action on this with fixed penalty notices, CCTV to catch flytippers in the act and stop and search operations on waste carriers with police and wardens.

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Councillor Jonathan Elmer referred to the cost of living crisis and linked waste to the council's strategy of economic growth.

He said: "I think as we all recognise the benefits of that, there are costs to that as well. For example, more houses means more waste generation."

He asked whether it would be better in the uncertain times to "go for stability rather than growth".

Cllr Jonathan Elmer. Picture: Paul Norris.

Mr Gorman said: "This increase in waste I think we need to tackle regardless of whether there's an increase in households or population.

"What we need to do is tackle the amount of waste generated per household.

"We've been reporting this for a number of quarters now, that it's increased due to the pandemic.

"People have been staying home more, they've been doing DIY jobs, there's a lot of packaging from that.

"They've been eating at home rather than eating out and that generates waste. They've been drinking at home and certainly the amount of glass we've recycled has increased.

"I would see that starting to tail off really as our economy opens up and people are getting out more.

"But it doesn't seem to be the case. That's not just in County Durham, that's a national picture."

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Cllr Bev Coult, chairing the committee, said stickers were proposed for bins showing what should and should not go into bins.

Cllr Joe Quinn asked what it would take to contaminate a wagon.

"Are we talking one jar filled with pickles, one pizza box with a bit of grease on?" he asked.

"What warrants a contaminated bin?"

Mr Gorman said he would chase up an answer to this question.