HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
WASTE MANAGEMENT PANEL
Thursday5July 2012 at 2.00 pm
PERFORMANCE UPDATE
Report of the Chief Executive & Director of Environment
[Author:Ray Greenall, Waste Manager, Contract Development
Tel: 01992 556160]
Executive Member: Derrick Ashley (Transformation, Performance & Waste Management)
1. Purpose of report
1.1To provide the Panel with an update on Hertfordshire’s local authority collected waste management performance. This update is based upon finalised data gathered for the year 2011/12.
2. Summary
2.1Over the course of 2011/12, the County Council, as the Waste Disposal Authority (WDA) for Hertfordshire, and the ten District and Borough Councils havecontinued the progress they have made in recent years and succeeded in further improving their waste management performance. As a result, the strategy targets agreed within the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership have been achieved a year ahead of schedule.
2.2Further improvements in waste management services have been made across the County, especially in Welwyn Hatfield, where the introduction of its ARRC (Alternate Refuse and Recycling Collections) scheme has seen household waste recycling rise from around 37% to 50% during the year. Changes to collection services in Three Rivers have also stimulated significant improvements in recycling behaviour with performance increasing from almost 51% to over 60%.
2.3The effect of these service improvements has been to further increase Hertfordshire’s recycling levels to above 50% and, in doing so, reduce the amount ofresidual waste being presented for disposal. The outcome has been has been to achieve the targets in the Hertfordshire Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy 2007-more than 50% recycling and composting of household waste and less than 285kg of residual household waste per head - a year ahead of schedule.
3. Conclusions
3.1The Panel is invited to receive this report and comment upon any particular aspects of the County’s performance.
4. Overview of Performance
4.1The projected figures for 2011/12 show thatHertfordshire’s municipal waste levels have reversed the downward trend of recent years and remain well in excess of half a million tonnes a year. The detailed breakdown is as follows:-
- 538,101tonnes of local authority collected waste (+633t), of which
- 131,465 tonnes were recycled or re-used (+382)
- 132,473tonnes were composted (+9,253t)
- 73,365 tonnes were sent for energy recovery (+32,047t)
- 200,162 tonnes were sent to landfill (-41,685t)
- 498,916 tonnes of this local authority collectedwaste were ‘household waste’by nature; the rest came from commercial and other non-household sources. This is an increase of 3,881 tonnes over the previous year.
- Hertfordshire has achieved a 50.19% household waste recycling and composting (and re-use) performance. This equates to 263,938tonnes being diverted from disposal. The average for Englandin 2010/11 was 41.2%.
- Hertfordshire’s total number of households in 2011/12was calculated to be 467,733, meaning that eachhousehold produced on average 1067kg of household waste over the course of the year. Of this, 531kg was disposed of in landfill sites and at ‘energy from waste’(EfW) facilities.
- The ten District and Borough Councils (as WCAs) collected 427,384tonnes of household waste through their kerbside collection services and ‘bring’ sites, as well as 25,623tonnes of waste from commercial outlets.
- The County Council (as WDA) received 71,532tonnes of household waste at itsseventeen household waste recycling centres (HWRCs), of which 67.94% was sent for recycling or composting. The County Council received 11,899 tonnes of soils and rubble at the HWRCs – which were sent for re-use - 102 tonnes of commercial waste at the Waterdale Transfer Station, and collected 28tonnes of asbestos, on request, from residents’ households.
- The County Council sent 126,481tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste to landfill – 27,684 tonnes less than in 2010/11 - using 74.3%of its allocation of 170,303LATS allowances for the year.
- Residual waste was disposed of under contract at six different facilities. Four of these were landfill sites and two wereEfW facilities. Only one of the facilities, a landfill site near Ware, is located within Hertfordshire; the remaining facilities being situated outside of the county in Bedfordshire,Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, North and West London.
- The County Council’s total revenue expenditure on the performance of its statutory duties as a Waste Disposal Authority (not including the PFI procurement costs) is expected to turn out in the order of £37.95m.
5.Financial Implications
5.1There are no direct financial implications relating to this report.
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