Vicky Kelso is Recycling and Waste Communications Officer in the Waste Strategy section of the Council and writes for Cambridge Matters on waste issues, as well as editing the magazine.
Waste Strategy is the section which sets out waste collection policy, works with contractors to process the City’s recycling and dispose of its waste, monitors recycling rates, develops new recycling schemes and promotes waste reduction, composting and recycling.
For more information on recycling in Cambridge, visit www.cambridge.gov.uk/recycling
For help with recycling call the Helpdesk on 01223 458282 or email customer.services@cambridge.gov.uk
Lo – po! The environment rocks! Boo – ya! Go environment!
Sincerely,
BDT
please arrange that all plastic materials that are marked with a recycling symbol can be put into the blue box for recycling and not only bottles.
I see more and more people doing it (putting everything with the tringle on it into this box)
Ines
Dear Ines
Unfortunately it is not currently possible in Cambridge to recycle plastic items that are not bottles. The council is looking for a company which can process these plastics, but there are very few in the UK, and none situated within a viable distance from the city. For more detailed information about this please visit http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/content/environment-and-recycling/rubbish-waste-and-recycling/recycling/plastic-recycling.en
I have had my blue boxes taken everytime with all types of plastic in & have seen these get sorted at the side of the truck so had assumed they were all being recycled. Yesterday, my boxes were left behind with no explanation. After writing to the council I was told that the crew found my boxes to be ‘contaminated’ – meaning there was plastics in there that were not bottles.
Why have my last two posts been taken down?
Paul Harvey
Hinton Avenue
There is a delay in posts being visible on the blog because they come to the administrator first to be approved. This is to ensure there are no profanities or spam on the site.
Vicky,
a great idea for you and Cambridge County Council.
Your Cambridgeshire Magazine is published four times a year. It has 24 pages – 12 pieces of paper typically printed on 80gsm bog paper. Here’s the maths, so pay attention.
Weight of each mag 210*297*12*80/1000,000 = 60grams.
They print 253,000 copies per issue (claim the publishers) weighing a total of 15,148 Kg per issue or 60,593Kg per year. If the magazine was closed the taxpayer would save £160,000 (one hundred and sixty thousand pounds) per year and the environment would be less damaged.
As a matter of interest, how much pollution does Cambridge Matters produce? And what does it cost to run. We have a right to know.
Paul Harvey
Hinton Avenue
Cambridge
I think you give some costs in a later post, so I won’t reproduce them here.
In terms of pollution, by which I assume you are mainly referring to carbon emissions, this would require us to have a life cycle analysis carried out. As this could not be done in-house a consultant would need to be commissioned.
Jim Bilton, (www.wessenden.com) a highly respected consultant to the publishing industry described magazine waste as “a time bomb ticking beneath the industry”. This quote comes from inCirculation Magazine, July / August 2007 page 18.
Does he know something you (CCC) don’t. Your magazine creates 10,000 Kg of waste per year and loses over £20,000 a year. How much does it cost the taxpayer to dispose of 10,000Kg of waste paper?
Given that the price of recycled materials has collapsed and the waste is having to be stockpiled, does this make sense?
Paul Harvey
Vicky
Would you please publish the advertising rates for Cambridge Matters on this blog so anyone wanting to advertise can see what they cost. It would be good free publicity for the magazine.
Would an increase in advertising revenue reduce the losses on the mag?
Maybe these questions will be answered when I see the contract with the publishers, but I think fellow bloggers would like to know.
Paul Harvey
Hinton Avenue
Cambridge
Seventeen years is a long time.
Cambridge households produce about 1 ton of rubbish every year, of which about 42% is recycled. There are 42,500 households in Cambridge.
The new Blue bins are expected to increase recycling to 45% which means the amount going to landfill will reduce from 0.58*42500 24,650 tons to 23375 tons. Land fill tax is currently £32 per ton, a tax imposed by the EU and something local democratic procedures can do nothing about.
The saving in landfill taxes due to blue bins will be (24650-23375)*32=1275*32= £40,800 per year.
The cost of effecting this saving is £694,000 to distribute 32500 blue bins.
Basically the payback time is 694000/40800 = 17.01 years.
It will be the year 2026 before this investment pays off.
There is another important point about Cambridge Matters.
The magazine is losing money yet it competes with highly subsidised advertising against local commercial publishers who can’t demand that the taxpayer subsidises them. Consequently, these publishers suffer reduced revenue. in the Spring 09 issue there were 7 pages of advertising which cost nearly £1000 per page of taxpayer’s money to produce.
This is blatantly unfair competition which presents a barrier to entry into this market for private publishers.
Paul Harvey
Hinton Avenue
Cambridge