May’s Waste Thoughts – 2024

Full notes below, quick summary – follow links for the detail:

Actions:

  • All please let Kate know about any businesses locally that do repair work (CASaV area / Middlesbrough / Guisborough / Northallerton)
  • All – please let Simon know if you able to volunteer to spend some time helping on our Bilsdale Stall Show.

Background – Our Monthly Waste Discussions

If you have just signed up to the Waste Group, then welcome, I hope these notes of our discussion make sense.

We meet once a month to talk about topics connected to waste and plan / report progress on our ongoing activities such as the Repair Cafes, Foodshare, Refill scheme and events such as the Bilsdale Show.  If you visit the “Thoughts on Waste” page on the CASaV website you can find all our past discussions – https://climateactionstokesleyandvillages.org/waste/thoughts-on-waste/

Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Notes form 14th May 2024 CASaV Waste Group

Updates

Pete

Moles in lawns: Fine tilth in mole hills, as used by gardeners of old as a fine potting compost without peat, I use tilth plus wood ash. One golf green keeper said it infects the grass due to virus? This seems to be disinformation as multiple websites suggest the soil makes great top soil – GardenAdvice and WalledNursery.

Patches with Copydex: Had great success with sticking patches on jeans and they still stay on in the wash. Radio 4 has a whole series on adhesives – Glued up – The Sticky Story of Humanity https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001y86p/episodes/player. There are multiple YouTube videos showing how to glue patches on and ChatGPT gives a nice summary of what to do:

Copydex is a brand of latex-based adhesive known for its versatility in various applications, including repairing jeans. Here’s how to patch jeans using Copydex:

  • a) Prepare the Area: Clean the area around the hole or tear in the jeans to remove any dirt or debris. This ensures better adhesion.
  • b) Cut Patch: Cut a piece of denim or fabric slightly larger than the damaged area on the jeans.
  • c) Apply Copydex: Spread a thin layer of Copydex adhesive on the backside of the patch and around the edges of the hole or tear on the jeans.
  • d) Position Patch: Carefully place the patch over the damaged area, ensuring it covers the hole completely.
  • e) Press and Dry: Press down firmly on the patch to ensure it adheres well to the jeans. Allow sufficient time for the adhesive to dry completely.

Tracey

North Yorkshire Council is setting up a public consultation on waste collection, part of the Let’s Talk consultations, plan launch for July.

DEFRA response to the government’s policy for simpler recycling has been announced – press release:

  1. That councils can collect all types of dry recycling together (comingled). This is a backward step from 2018 waste strategy (Our Waste, Our Resources: A Waste Strategy for England), as it lowers the quality of the recycled material and so make a true circular materials system more difficult to achieve. In North Yorkshire only Scarborough has totally comingled. North Yorkshire waste won’t change until combined contracts are introduced.
  2. Weekly food waste collections need to be in place in 2027, but food waste can be collected with garden waste, however this would mean weekly collections of garden waste. Anyway this doesn’t apply to North Yorkshire Council as due to the recent setting up of the unitary authority they have been exempted with a hold until potentially 2040.
  3. Councils have to collect general household waste at least fortnightly. Some councils doing 3 weekly and some even thinking about 4 weekly, as it turns out longer gaps = more recycling.

So the 2018 consistent collections has become simpler collections.

More waste collections means more diesel is used, but this issue was not considered as part of government’s simpler policy. For North Yorkshire while looking at electric vehicles the distances covered make this currently technically difficult, but looking at how to travel greener. Considering for food waste, NYC may have required extra vehicles. Now thinking of pods for food waste, to achieve weekly collections this would require pods on both residual waste and recycling trucks.

Sadly the government’s policies ignore the biggest effect which ways to reduce all waste, instead it appears they a intent on just rearranging the deck chairs.

How much food waste? The government has announced that councils must do weekly food waste collections, but lots of us don’t seem to have any, however data says there is a lot of food waste in residual waste on average, based on lots of studies of real food waste and lots of reports on estimated food waste. Food waste would go to anearobic disgesters, in fact Allerton Park already pulls some out of contaminated residual waste, where biogas extracted is used to burn for energy and digesters left overs can go on land if of suitable quality.

David

New Scientist has highlighted how car tyre chemicals are more of an environmental hazard than other plastic pollution – making up over 50% of microplastics in water and 80% in air. This is all from normal use of tyres and doesn’t really consider end of life disposal. Tyres are complex material composites, so there is cost to dispose of at end of life.

New Scientist talks about nanorobots made of millions of tiny metal particles placed in a slurry of plastic microbead with an applied magnetic field which generate Casimer forces which bundle the microplastic particles together into bigger particles which can easily be removed.

Wendy

Should Marmite be labelled as waste? Marmite is made in Burton on Trent from the leftover yeast from beer brewing, so it is really waste. The waste from Marmite goes to fish farms.

The Darlington & Stockton Times highlighted that many people have unused crutches and walking aids which hospitals in the past weren’t able to take back, but now Medequip collect these items for recycling and reuse, and also have collection bins at local NYC recycling centres.

A wildlife artist from Darlington, David Cemmick’s recent “Out of the box” series features sculpture from packaging, for example an anteater made from Amazon packaging, great example of upcycling.

Fred

What you find in your compost? Looked like a giant onion, but no layers within it, however it could be a daffodil bulb in which case it would be highly toxic.

People are being approached in Guisborough by ICF Survey with promises to make your cold home warm. You need to satisfy certain eligibility criteria around low income, health and receipt of certain benefits. There are local schemes to funnel government / energy company funding to people in need which different companies are involved in delivering, however you should check with local government that any specific scheme is going to be effective for you and that the company is not just making unreasonable profits by getting maximum grant but supplying you with very little. Check with local council sustainability / climate change / housing department to find out schemes which operate locally for you. Currently in North Yorkshire, one scheme is the Home Upgrade Grants phase 2, set of income criteria and also not on gas grid.

Guisborough Environment Group is looking to highlight ways to reduce plastic, such as anywhere plastic is being reduced, crisps changing from plastic bags to paper bags. A few sources of great resources are lessplastic.org.uk with infographics on many different contexts in which to you can reduce plastic use, Refill is a great scheme with an app to see where you can get your water bottle refilled, CASaV’s leaflet “Fight plastic peril” has many suggestions for reducing plastic use.

CAST – working with businesses

Bike Friendly Scheme in Redcar, Sustrans and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are approaching shops to allow people bring their bike in while shopping, stickers in the shop window let you know it is ok. Sainbury’s is the only shop that allows it in Guisborough.

Anne

Stikes Garden Centre are giving away bags of coffee grounds to add to your compost, they are part of the Klondike Group which means they also take back plastic plant pots. Whitegates also take back plastic plant pots.

Shoe Spa in Stokesley will refurbish shoes. Shoe Spa are a professional shoe care and restoration business, effectively glow-ups for shoes.

Kate

For Great Big Green Week(8-16 June) CASaV have a number of things going on including our June Repair Cafe on Saturday 8th June with an extra Mend in Public where we will out sewing on Stokesley High Street.

Great Big Green Week (8-16th June) – activities are highlighted on CASaV’s website – GBGW 2024 – including:

  • 8th June
    • Repair Cafe
    • Great Ayton Fair CASaV Stall
    • Visits to Songbird Wild Flower Nursery in Ingleby Greenhow
  • Throughout the week, displays in the Stokesley Globe, Great Ayton Discovery Centre and Hutton Rudby Hub – Dark Skies, Plastic Peril, …

There is a rudimentary “Directory of repair businesses” on our website, we would like to extend this into a useful resource to encourage repair beyond what our Repair Cafe is able to carry out.

Action – all let Kate know any businesses locally that do repair work any business in CASaV area / Middlesbrough / Guisborough / Northallerton

Furniture Works NY in Scarborough, part of the Future Works NY charity, upcycles furniture into arty pieces. Future Works employ people who are struggling to find employment and Furniture Works is one of the ways they do this.

I just ordered my first box of oranges through Crowd Farming making a connection with an organic farmer. Individual growers find that supermarket buyers only purchase for a limited peak season when the supplier is able to reliably fill huge order, so supermarkets won’t buy smaller amounts at the beginning or end of seasons. Crowd Farming link you up directly to organic farmers to buy off them the crop out of peak season. This was recently highlighted on Farming Today on Radio 4 – last week – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yy85.

Simon

In 2019 when I read the government strategy “Our Waste Our Resource – A Waste Strategy for England” this was a practical approach to getting England to a better place, as it would enforce fundamental principles such as “polluter pays”. So starting to shift the responsibility for reducing waste from powerless individuals to powerful producers. So if you go back through our notes for the last 3 years you will find multiple mentions of it. However, as Tracey has pointed out, this document has now become a list of practical approaches which the government has now chosen to delay, dilute or undermine through subsequent actions.

On 25th April DEFRA issued a policy paper which included a further 2 year delay for the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for drinks bottle to 2027 at the earliest, originally promised for 2023, then delayed to 2025. DRS will either result in increased costs for industry or require changes in their methods of operation to reduce the reliance on non-recyclable materials or investments in improve recyclable materials. As each deadline has got closer industry has briefed that the timeline is too short and that it is not possible achieve it, despite extensive involvement in the consultations that set the deadlines. Industry has largely delayed investing in the necessary changes no doubt largely to keep profits up and costs down, but this reluctance is not helped by the knowledge that the regulations will probably be delayed. So I suspect that William Hill would give you very good odds if you were willing to bet on the introduction of DRS actually happening in 2027.

Tracey has described the situation on food waste collections, another key component in the “Our Waste Our Resource”. Other policies such as extended producer responsibility (EPR), basically polluter pays, has been watered down and delayed.

All these changes mean that I can see little happening to reduce England’s production of waste. Whereas if Our Waste Our Resource had been followed through then not only would waste have been significantly reduced, but we would have moved towards the circular materials system, which is the only ultimately possible on a finite planet. Of course this explains why incinerators continue to be built, they require waste to burn, so significant reductions in the production of waste means that an incinerator’s financial case is undermined. This is sad as not only do incinerators result in massive CO2 emissions, but they also contribute to poor air quality not just due to the smoke coming from the chimney, but also from the operation of the materials handling facilities and the handling of the residual ash.


Matters Arising

Repair Cafes are progressing well:

  • 13th April – Stokesley – new arrangement of library worked well aside from entrance where flow was somewhat restricted, will look at different ways to do things in June;
  • 18th May – Swainby – seemed a bit quieter but over 50 items were dealt with and Sustrans helped with bikes outside;
  • next one 8th June – Stokesley – our Great Big Green Week Repair Cafe.

Last year Middlesbrough Environment City was all set to hold a Repar Cafe at the Hope foundation, then their insurer pulled the plug. So the mantle was taken up by Friends of the Earth Middlesbrough, Redcar and Stockton who with help from lots of local and 6 of Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe’s volunteers held the first Middlesbrough Repair Cafe on 11th May at the Friends Meeting House, 131 Cambridge Road, Acklam/Linthorpe. It was well attended by local people, politicians and over 40 items were dealt with. The next is on 22nd June 10.30am.

Other Repair Cafe Dates: 25th May – Guisborough – sewing repair cafe; 9th June – Richmond; 22nd June – Middlesbrough.

AOB

Bilsdale Show – 31st August 2024 – CASaV will once again help with recycling and have a stall.

Action: All – please let Simon know if you able to volunteer to spend some time helping on our Bilsdale Show stall.

What Planet are you On?, the zero waste shop in Guisborough is sadly closing Friday 24th May, however some zero waste shopping will still be possible with “Guisborough Refill” supplying refill cleaning product in Sarah Liegh Gallagher hairdressers.

Next Meeting – 11th June