The Future of Waste in Essex

Last year (2008/09) in Braintree we produced a massive 56,845 tonnes of household waste - that's on average just over 1 tonne per household.  So what happened to all that rubbish? Well, with your help:

15,172 tonnes were recycled - that includes the materials you put out in your clear sacks for recycling and all the materials you took to your local recycling centres.

10,437 tonnes were composted - that's all the garden waste and food waste you put out in your green bins

That gave us a recycling rate of just over 45%, an increase over the previous year (2007/08) which was 42.8%.

But this still means that 31,245 tonnes of waste was sent to landfill

A key part of our solution to the waste issue is to encourage even higher levels of recycling;  however we will always need to deal with the waste that is left.  In order to deliver an innovative and resource efficient waste management system for Essex we need to invest in new technologies which treat the residual waste and which can extract further recyclable material from the waste.

Councils across Essex have developed a Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for dealing with waste in the future.  This will mean lots more recycling, waste minimisation and the use of new treatment processes such as Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) and Anaerobic Digestion (AD) to replace landfill.

As part of the consultation process, local people were asked about their recycling habits and what they thought about Essex's future plans for disposing of household waste.  A huge 84% were keen that once all recycling and composting had taken place, Essex Councils should avoid sending waste to landfill and instead use new processes such as MBT which turns part of the remaining non-recyclable waste into fuel for energy production and AD, a form of biotreatment for organic waste which produces a gas which can be used to generate electricity.

Braintree Council's strategy is to:

- reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place (waste minimisation) by encouraging residents to "shop smart"

- encourage reuse of items no longer wanted. Click here to go to Essex County Council's A to Z of waste for information on how to reduce, reuse and recycle items which would otherwise go to waste.

- provide kerbside recycling services and local recycling centres for as many materials as possible

- increase the amount of food waste that we take for composting

- keep residents informed of the latest advances in recycling and the materials we can collect.

There are many environmental and financial benefits of diverting waste from landfill, such as helping to tackle climate change, better use of valuable resources and paying less in landfill tax.

For more information on the waste strategy please visit the Essex County Council website (click here).