By a member of the Waste Team.

The Chairman welcomed the Waste Strategy Manager, Naomi Markham, to the meeting and invited her to update the Panel.  The Waste Strategy Manager explained that she had been to a previous Sustainability Panel earlier in the year where she had given Members data with regard to the food waste collections in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead from the first quarter.

Members were informed that the September figures were not available to date but that up until the end of August there had been just over a 43% increase on food waste collected in the Royal Borough. 

It was noted that the Council had saved just under £41k on food collection costs in the first seven months of collections. 

The Waste Strategy Manager informed the Panel that she had been delighted to see the volume of food waste collected in May had increased by 65%  from the same month in 2015. 

The Waste Strategy Manager explained that she wanted to maintain the momentum and was now looking at harder to reach areas that did not recycle as much as they could for example flats.

                        In the ensuing discussion, the following points were noted:  

·           That the Panel would like to be updated on the increase in food collections shown month on month.

·           That food waste bags were still available to residents from all Royal Borough libraries, the receptions in the Town Hall in Maidenhead and York House in Windsor.   

·           That Stafferton Way had seen a 20% increase in food waste collections by way of residents using the green liners. 

·           That 2,500 containers had been distributed and levels of waste collections had been maintained.

·           That a trial would be starting this month  with regard to flats where bins were not labelled up well in bin stores as part of a rolling campaign.  It was noted that a door knocking exercise would be taking place tomorrow to inform residents of the campaign which included a leaflet of the do’s and dont’s. The Waste Manager explained the flat residents would be left with a storage bag which had worked well in London Boroughs.   It was noted that the target was to achieve 95% recycling.  The Waste Manager informed the Panel that the campaign would cost approximately £30k and would be delivered by EnviroComms.

·           That it was still not possible for the food waste bags to be delivered with the ATRB newsletter as the newsletter was now delivered by Royal Mail. 

·           That Veolia would not distribute the food recycling sacks to residents on a bag for bag basis (like in Ealing) as they believed there to be a health and safety issue involved.  It was noted that there was 2.5 years remaining on the Veolia contract but that it could be something that could be looked into in the future.  Councillor Derek Sharp stated that he would be interested to see the vehicles used by Veolia.  

·           It was questioned whether Veolia was contributing towards the cost of education pupils about recycling.  The Waste Manager explained that there was no incentive in the contract with Veolia but that they were very helpful with other things such as textile recycling at no extra cost. 

·           That no leeway was given regarding uncollected bins and that mis-collections were paid to the Council on a monthly basis.  It was noted that for the vast majority of the time Veolia was collecting 99.9% of bins.

·           That whilst individual roads could not be identified as being better at recycling than others food waste areas could be identified. 

·           That green waste could not go to anaerobic digestion and that if green waste and food waste was collected together (as in Buckinghamshire) then the Council would not be able to charge for the garden waste collection.  

·           That kitchen food waste would be cost effective if it could be linked to commercial food waste or joined with another Borough.

Councillor Werner requested that the Waste Strategy Manager emailed him detailed food waste collection figures along with the information behind the figures. 

The Chairman thanked the Waste Strategy Manager for her update, wished her luck with the future campaign and stated that she looked forward to receiving an update at the next meeting.