Magherafelt Council Blue Bin Success

 The introduction of the Magherafelt District Council Blue Bin system for the bi-weekly collection of re-cyclable waste has been a tremendous success so far. Paper, cardboard and clean cans are being carefully segregated at the point of use by our householders and packed in a clean condition at a rate well beyond the expectations of the council. While I expected that it would be difficult to achieve a recycling rate of 15% which was the target in many parts of the UK our citizens are regularly achieving up to 20%.

 I am sure that this astounding success is due to the fact that we in the Magherafelt Council have been always ahead of the field in discussing methods of waste management and this planning has undoubtedly spread throughout the District.

 There are two bonuses for the local environment. Firstly, there is much less material from black bins being dumped into our own land-fill site to rot and pollute the air and water table. Secondly, the further processing of the blue bin materials is reducing the need to cut down trees for paper and is also reducing the amount of mining required to produce new tins and cans.

 Another bonus is the progress towards achieving the targets for re-cycling which have been fixed by the European Community and which we must meet or suffer severe financial penalties. We still have a long way to go.

 The Council’s next step is to make a success of composting separated kitchen waste. Various options that we have looked at over the last few years have been less than successful or even bitten the dust. A very expensive Swedish trial near Gothenborg which Magherafelt Councillors viewed two years ago has now been closed down because the Swedes were not able to control the obnoxious smells that wafted around the neighbouring residential area. And an equally expensive German waste composting plant was having difficulties in getting a market for the rather poor final product that they produced. Let us hope that the much smaller scale experiment that our council is presently launching will be more successful. We should all know in three to four months time.

  It is unlikely that we can recycle enough by the various methods presently open to us to satisfy the EC requirements and we will be forced to embrace thermal treatment methods to avoid penalties. If we chose just to ignore the regulations we then will have to cart waste to somebody else’s thermal plant and be a victim of a punitive gate-price that is outside our control. Some hard thinking still needs to be done but I am confident that the Council at Magherafelt will still be ahead of the field in waste management for years to come. This is just what the ratepayers have ordered!