What happens to the household rubbish recycled by York residents?

It’s a whirlwind of activity and the noise is deafening. Tins are being shunted into piles; bales of paper clank along an elevator and conveyer belts clatter as operators sift through the piles speeding past them. They all wear ear defenders here; after a few seconds you realise why.

Waiting lorry drivers are grabbing a quick fag break at the makeshift rest area before it’s their turn to unload, while Shaun Yates and his team – known as Round J – back up to disgorge paper and cardboard from the first compartment of their truck.

Geoff Derham, City Of York Council’s head of waste services, is on site to dispel a few myths, such as why the mountain of rubbish behind him appears to be an incompatible assortment of plastic bottles, drinks cans and baked bean tins.

Is all of it – as some fear – destined for the landfill, despite our best efforts to separate them as instructed?

“Take a look at this,” he says, heading up the staircase to where the conveyor belt men are hard at work.

“Just here is a heavy duty magnet and as the piles go past, it picks off the metal tins. Aluminium cans are then steered to one side by using electrical eddy currents and that just leaves the plastic.”

He shows me the various bins and not one rogue element has snuck in. So there we are then, that’s why we can put plastic and metal in the same kerbside box.

It looks busy today, organised chaos if you like, but Geoff says some days are even more frantic. After Christmas is always busy, while Mother’s Day and Easter generate a huge volume of extra card and plastic packaging.

Then there’s the weather factor. A hot summer weekend will yield tonnes more bottles as revellers take advantage with an evening’s barbeque.

In York, we have nine large trucks and four smaller ones to keep our green boxes empty and Geoff has a lot of time for the crews that operate them.

“These are tough men doing a tough job in a tough environment,” he says.

“They are out there in all weathers, doing physically demanding work. It’s non-stop and not the menial task some people think it is. I’m very proud of them.”

This year is the fifth anniversary of York’s kerbside recycling service and garden waste collection, which alternates weekly with rubbish that can’t be reused. Geoff is happy with the progress made so far.

“The introduction of these changes has ensured that York is one of the top performers nationally when it comes to recycling. Now, around 45 per cent of our waste is recycled and that has also helped the council avoid the heavy financial penalties that would have been imposed if it failed to meet government targets to reduce waste sent to landfill sites. “We want to say thank you to all residents who helped us achieve this; our target for this year is to recycle 50 per cent.”

To some, the idea of carting boxes through the house from the back garden is annoying, but this is serious business. We may be getting better at it, but 35 per cent of recyclables still end up in landfill.

And the council needs us to come on board, so tomorrow and Wednesday drop-in sessions for residents in Leeman Road, Poppleton Road and Acomb will outline the city-wide changes to kerbside collections.

By now Shaun has unloaded all three compartments and it’s time to head off again. I join him and Round J on the road to Acomb where their first stop is Lindsey Avenue. As crew-member Paul Whittaker points out, some houses are easier to serve than others.

“Around three-quarters of homes in the city receive the recycling service. Some, though, like terraced streets with narrow back lanes and flats are quite difficult.”

By the end of the year, it will be a government requirement that all households receive a recycling collection for at least two materials. So a trial was implemented in The Groves area to iron out collecting problems and the council thinks it has found most of the solutions.

Shaun reverses the truck into another tight spot and it’s time to load up again. Perhaps surprisingly, there is still a lot of sorting for the men to do and that led to another idea during The Groves trial, which came from the crews themselves.

Thanks to the likes of Round J, the next move will come in June with the introduction of three boxes and Shaun says it will mean crews spending less time sifting at the truck side and more time collecting.

“It will make quite a bit of difference to us,” he says. “Because we spend a lot of time with our hands in boxes sorting out the glass, tins and paper. But the new boxes will have lids and that means they will look tidier, paper is less likely to be blown across the street on windy days, and the road will look better both before and after collections.”

Dean White returns to the cab. He has been chasing strewn paper and says crews spend a lot of time clearing up, something the new boxes should reduce. “If everything is separated it will be a lot quicker for us,” he says. “And that means we can finish a street in half the time.”

Introducing the scheme will cost almost half a million pounds, but the council believes it will be recouped within three years, and is encouraged by a straw poll showing that 83 per cent of York residents are in favour of changing the way they recycle to make it less time-consuming.

If you ask any of the men and women on the trucks or those at Hessay what they think about the need to recycle, you will find a passionate commitment. The darting digger-drivers say it is cost effective to recycle because that’s the route to cheaper raw materials and there is no limit on how often some can be recycled.

Get the conveyer belt sifters to remove their ear defenders and they will talk animatedly about reducing our reliance on scarce and increasingly pricey natural resources.

And then there is Shaun and his crew, out there in all weathers, just looking for a bit of consideration for what they do, because as he says: “If you think about it, with less land available for dumping, recycling is fast becoming the only option we’ve got.”

• To find out exactly what you can recycle at home go to york.gov.uk

How old tin cans end up as part of a new car...

YorWaste recycles the waste collected by the council at its Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Hessay, York, and then sells it on. Most of the aluminium and steel goes to produce new tins, cars and even planes.

Coloured glass comes mainly from imported wine bottles so it is resold on the Continent, most newspapers are printed on reused paper, while cardboard packaging from computers, TVs and the like is sent back to the far east where resources to make new cardboard are scarcer.

Plastic can take hundreds of years to break down in landfill sites, so it is far more environmentally friendly to re-process as much as possible.

A lot of household waste is recyclable and items such as fridges and electrical equipment, which are not allowed in the green box, can be taken to the council sites at:

• Hazel Court on the James Street industrial estate, off Lawrence Street

• Beckfield Lane, York

• Towthorpe Household Recycling Centre, Moor Lane, Strensall

Some food waste can be composted at home and cardboard and shredded paper help make good compost. Further information and advice is available from York Rotters tel: 01904 412861 or email rotters@stnicksfields.org.uk

The impact of kerbside recycling and composting

• Total household waste
2004/2005 – 100,670 tonnes
2009/2010 – 91,730 tonnes (provisional figure)

• Household waste recycling and composting
2004/2005 – 17.8 per cent
2009/2010 – 43.3 per cent (provisional figure)

• Household waste recycling and composting
2004/2005 – 17,890 tonnes
2009/2010 – 39,680 tonnes (provisional figure)

• Waste that goes to landfill sites
2004/2005 – 82,780 tonnes
2009/2010 – 52,050 tonnes (provisional figure pending audit)

• Landfill tax saving resulting from household waste recycling & composting
2009/2010 – £5.27 million