Why we've had our fill

EVERY citizen of York should be required to visit the Harewood Whinn landfill site, colloquially known as Rufforth Tip. It may just make us all think a bit more about what we chuck in the bin.

The tip is not a nice place and that's no disrespect to the people who run it. Mountains of rubbish are piled up to form a landscape that is almost lunar in its desolation.

Plastic bags filled with unmentionable contents; old shoes; broken toys; twisted bits of wire and metal; old mattresses with their innards spilling out; all lie tangled in a sludge of human waste.

A giant compactor - like a huge steamroller - prowls back and forth over this mess, compressing and squeezing it down so it takes up less space.

It is followed by a flock of grimy seagulls, out for what they can get. And the smell is indescribable - a mix of methane from the rotting organic matter, and the stink of that vile, scummy water that gathers in the bottom of your bin if you leave the lid open and it starts to rain.

Every year, the people of York dump 100,000 tonnes of rubbish here. Every year, this mountain of festering garbage gets bigger. And all because many of us are too lazy to sort out the rubbish which can be recycled - newspapers, glass jars and bottles, tin cans and green waste such as grass cuttings and hedge clippings - from that which cannot.

The drive to encourage us to recycle more has already begun to pay dividends. Last time I visited the tip, it was full of old newspapers - rotting copies of the Evening Press prominent among them. This time, there were almost none, and fewer tin cans and bottles than I remember.

That is because vast quantities of these materials are now being recycled. Last year alone, the people of York recycled 5,699 tonnes of paper, 3,053 tonnes of glass, 307 tonnes of cans and 54 tonnes of plastic.

Most of this was separated from household rubbish by ordinary, responsible-minded men and women and either taken to a recycling bank or, since the expansion of the kerbside recycling scheme, put into the green kerbside boxes for collection by the council.

It is then processed at Yorwaste's state-of-the-art recycling facility at Hessay, just up the road from Rufforth, before being sent off to various plants across the north to be used again - turned into new glass bottles, cans and Evening Presses.

That has to beat simply burying it. Not enough people, however, are recycling their rubbish. Kristy Walton, City of York Council's head of waste strategy, says that, on the latest count, only about 60 per cent of households on the council's kerbside recycling scheme bother to use it. The rest of us are just binning all our rubbish indiscriminately.

The council is desperate to increase the number of people who are recycling: and admits that is one reason for its controversial decision to scrap the weekly refuse collection.

From September, 60,000 homes across the city with gardens will have their rubbish collected on an alternating, two-week cycle. One week, it will be normal domestic rubbish. The next, it will be recyclable rubbish plus, in a new initiative, green, compostable waste such as grass clippings. A new bin will be provided for this material.

One effect of this 'twin -' system will be that ordinary black wheelie bins will have to be able to hold two weeks worth of household rubbish. And that, the council hopes, will force us to think more carefully about what we put in our wheelie bins.

Instead of filling them up with grass cuttings, hedge trimmings and recyclable glass bottles and tin cans, the argument goes, we will separate those out for recycling so our normal bins won't fill up so quickly.

"It will encourage people to compost and recycle more, to think more about what goes in their bin," says Kristy Walton. "We need to encourage people to start diverting waste away from landfill."

The other reason for introducing the twin-bin system is to reduce the amount of garden and green waste that ends up in landfill. If it is just dumped in the bin along with the rest of the rubbish, it rots at Rufforth to produce smelly methane - a greenhouse gas 25 times as harmful as carbon dioxide.

Many people do compost their garden waste. Others take it to green waste bins at places such as Foss Islands. But that is not practical for everybody. By introducing the new green waste collection, the council hopes to make it easier.

At the moment, between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of garden waste is taken separately to Rufforth from York every year and turned into valuable compost. With the new collection, the council hopes to almost double that.

The tip's composting operation is an impressive sight. Garden waste is brought here, chipped, and then piled into great, long, steaming heaps. The temperature inside these heaps can reach 70 degrees C, says Yorwaste recycling manager John Miller - enough to kill off any pathogens or harmful bugs.

The compost is turned every week or so and after 12 or 13 weeks spread out to cool. It is then sieved to produce a fine, loamy-textured material with a rich earthy smell - ideal for gardens, and far better than dumping it in the landfill with the rest of our rubbish to rot and pump out smelly methane.

The cost of landfill

Few would disagree with the council's aim of reducing the amount of green waste buried in landfill. There are, however, plenty of questions about the way the council is introducing it.

Such as, for example, why do they plan to keep the twin-bin system operating year round (with the exception of Christmas and the New Year)? The vast bulk of garden waste is produced in spring and summer. So why not revert to the ordinary, weekly rubbish collection in winter?

Partly because it would be costly to keep changing the system, is one answer. But it is also a deliberate policy to force people to reduce the amount of ordinary rubbish they produce. "It is about encouraging people to be responsible for their own waste," says the city council's head of communications Matt Beer.

Any why is the scheme being introduced in one go, without a pilot to see how it works? The scheme will be monitored, says Mr Beer, but because it has already been introduced successfully in other councils (including Ryedale and Hambleton in North Yorkshire) it was felt there was no need for a pilot. "You could almost say other councils have piloted it for us," says Mr Beer.

There is also a financial element. From this year there are tough targets on how much green waste councils can bury in landfill. York's target is 66,000 tonnes this year, which it will just about reach. But that target will be reduced in future years, down to 20,000 tonnes by 2020. With a £150 fine for every tonne buried over the target, failing to act now would be expensive.

If the council did nothing, and the amount of rubbish buried in landfill every year continued to rise at the rate it is, it could, within just five years, cost the city council £6.5 million a year in combined fines and landfill tax, says Kristy Walton. There are better way to spend that money.

How to stop wasting so much food...

RECYCLING is one way to reduce the amount of rubbish we bury. The other is to produce less in the first place.

Food would be a good place to start. According to food industry figures, the average adult wastes £420 a year on food that will end up being thrown away. As much as 40 per cent of food we buy will never even leave its packaging.

So how can we cut down on the food we throw out?

By only buying what we need, for a start and by being a bit clearer about when food is still safe to eat.

Dr Sandra Stringer, food microbiologist at the Institute of Food Research, has the following advice:

VEGETABLES

Some vegetables last longer than others. Root vegetables such as turnips, swedes and potatoes can last for months if kept in the dark. As long as they are uncooked, vegetables aren't a food poisoning risk but once they start going mouldy, throw them away.

FRUIT

Raw fruit isn't unsafe to eat when it goes off but should be thrown away if it goes brown, mouldy or starts to shrivel.

FRESH FISH AND MEAT

Can spoil very quickly - stick to the use-by dates.

BREAD

Bread isn't a health risk if it goes beyond its best-before date, but it tends to go dry. Throw it out if it goes mouldy.

DAIRY

The shelf life of cheese will depend on its moisture content. A soft cheese or cottage cheese won't last as long as a hard cheese such as Cheddar. A Parmesan cheese, which is very dry, can last for years.

EGGS

Lion-marked eggs don't contain salmonella and will last a week or so after the best-before date in a refrigerator - but if they don't bear the mark, use them within the suggested date.

DRY FOOD

Lasts for ages, so long as it is kept dry.

TINNED FOOD

Can last for years but once tins are opened food can react with the metal and bacteria can grow. Transfer any leftover food into a sealed container.

FROZEN FOOD

Freezing slows down changes but food will deteriorate eventually over time. Keep temperatures at -18C.

Updated: 09:16 Thursday, June 02, 2005