Contaminated recycling costs Medway council tens of thousands

Items like nappies or food waste have to be disposed of alternatively, and when mixed with recycling there's an additional cost.

Transcript

00:00Tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money spent on dealing with waste gone wrong.

00:06Last November, Medway Council reported that 20% of kerbside recycling was contaminated,

00:12meaning it had to be disposed of by alternative means, with a cost of £57,000 over the previous

00:1912 months.

00:20And the problem is still ongoing. The council spent £25,000 disposing of contaminated recycling

00:27in the five months after that November council meeting. That's more than 1,000 tonnes of

00:34contaminated recycling.

00:36Recycling can become contaminated by rogue items being put in the wrong bags. Down the

00:41road in Raynham, passers-by were confident that they were recycling savvy, but were slightly

00:47taken aback by the cost of contamination.

00:50Pretty confident. You get the fun sack for the plastics and glass and things like that,

00:58and another one, a box for the paper and the card.

01:01Yeah, I've got a brown bin for garden rubble. I use the green bins and then I use the black

01:08bags.

01:09I put everything where it should go.

01:12So would it surprise you then to know that the council has spent £25,000 disposing

01:17of contaminated recycling?

01:20Really? Wow. If people did what they meant to do, you wouldn't have this problem.

01:30Some people just don't care, as long as it's not in their backyard, whatever.

01:35That's all you can do, a leaflet, I think, in their front letterbox, and say that it's

01:42costing the council money that they should be spending on something else.

01:46The Raynham Eco Hub has been helping to boost Raynham's sustainability since it started

01:51in 2020. They say this problem may not be malicious.

01:55There's a concept called wish cycling, which is where people really, really want to do

01:59the right thing. And so I think sometimes people can end up putting things in recycling,

02:04not because they're bad people and not because they're lazy or because they don't care, but

02:08because they really want to do the right thing. So some of the items that end up contaminating

02:16waste can include batteries or household recycling, food waste, nappies, textiles.

02:23And the people that are producing the items that need recycling, they need to have a bit

02:27more of a conversation with people of, you know, how to do that more effectively.

02:33A Medway Council spokesperson says that information on how different types of waste should be

02:38recycled is widely available, with guidelines printed on recycling bags and available on

02:45their website and social media channels. So next time it comes to recycling day, be

02:50careful because the contamination may be more than you think.

02:54Oliver Leaders, The Sacks, in Raynham for KMTV.