December’s Waste Thoughts – 2024

Our next meeting is Wassail in Swainby on Wednesday 7th January 7pm – Please contact simongibbon@casav.uk for further details.

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

  • Waste:
  • Recycle / Reuse / Circularity:
  • Textiles:
    • Fibe has made the ultimate sustainable fibre from potatoes.
  • Repair Cafes:
    • Stokesley Repair Cafe – 14th December 10am-12pm The Globe Library / 18th January 10am – 12pm Swainby Village Hall
    • Environment and Climate Osmotherley are running weekly mending sessions – in December these will 3rd and 10th December only, check the Enivronment Climate Osmotherley Facebook group for dates in January.
  • CASaV Wide
    • CASaV will have a Sustainable Christmas Stall on Stokesley Market on 6th December.
    • Yorwaste takes our garden waste and it into the Yorganics compost range.
    • We should all have water butts they are a win in so many ways – water for our gardens / cleaning, less water in our sewers so less sewer overflows, delay rain from filling rivers so reduces flooding.
    • The Sussex University Buzz Club is a great piece of citizen science with multiple projects helping insects in all sorts of ways.

Actions:

  • All send suggestions to Anne of green fact / myth / resolution for the CASaV Sustainable Christmas Stall lucky dip.

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 3rd December 2024 CASaV Waste Group

Stall

Rota:

Kate – 8am – 1pm
Becci – 11am – 1pm
Helen – 11am – 1pm
Bridget – 8.30am – 1pm
Jenny – 9am – 11am
Caryn – 11am – 1pm
Tracey – 8.30am – 12pm
Anne – 8am – 11.45am
Simon – 8am – 10.30am, 11.45am – 1pm

All: Suitable festive attire – Christmas jumpers / hats / antlers … etc.

Anne:

Christmas stars from old books / Coop soft plastics poster
Quiz / resolutions dip – basically lucky dip fact / myth / resolution: become citizen a scientist; install a water butt; why not have a veggy Monday; get biopuff – made from seeds can replace feathers in pillows. Currently got 50 items.

Some more: save grey water from bath / shower to water garden or flush toilet; reuse wrapping paper; reuse last year’s cards as labels on gifts; get children/grandchildren an experience not stuff – visit to theatre / granny and grandad visit to the playground / go on a walk with a picnic / ….

Action: All send suggestions to Anne of green fact / myth / resolution for the CASaV Sustainable Christmas Stall lucky dip

Kate:

Free draught excluders (around 20) plus (new) leaflets on low cost, low tech ways to save energy, cut bills & reduce carbon emissions.

Hands on activities making: Christmas decorations from repurposing unwanted CDs; gift tags from repurposing old card / Xmas cards.

Display of plastic free, upcycled Christmas wrapping, decorations etc (newspaper chains, magazine xmas tree table decs) plus accompanying leaflets with other ideas for sustainable, plastic free Christmas.

United for Warm Homes community scarf – long scrap patchwork scarf to attach messages to MP on gift tags / scraps re need for better home insulation, more sustainable energy sources etc
Information on Plastic Free Communities plus all our info leaflets including updated Winter / Christmas seasonal & sustainable recipes

Some printed copies of the December newsletter to look at / take away & mailing list sign up sheet.

Tracey: Examples of what can and can’t be recycled with a Christmas focus – as advice to help people avoid generating more waste.

Bridget: Hedgehog display.

Jenny: Hairbands.

Simon: Yellow Tabbards, Gazeebo, Tables from Library, Gift for Conversation

Actions from Previous Meetings

Tracey – discover North Yorkshire Council involvement in Skipton / Craven Plastic Free Community and NYC’s ability to be involved in any new ones.

NYC’s Climate Group are not involved currently with Plastic Free Communities in Settle / Skipton. PFCs need actively involved councils, so will check with either Parish / Town / District on board.
It would be good for NYC to be involved to show reducing single use plastics.

Tracey discuss with NYC’s commercial waste director how to make Give and/or Take events possible across the whole of North Yorkshire.

Hopeful of finding a way to make this possible, arranged for a discussion with Commercial waste team. Ryedale no exchange of money – nobody paying for hauls – all done on a charity base, Ryedale also resorted at household waste.

All suggestions for what to offer on our Christmas Stall.

See above.

Simon approach wood workers for any source of offcuts for hedgehog and owl homes.

Only tiny pieces of wood offcuts – need to go to saw mill or timber yard

Updates

Wendy

The company Fibe sees us all wearing potatoes, as described in New Scientist, Fibe use the tops which are poisonous – extracting fibres and making clothes, so very much waste to clothes, potentially the most sustainable fibre. Anything that could reduce the need for cotton would be good, as cotton has a huge water demand, for example Aral sea has dried up largely due to irrigation of cotton fields.

Mould from discarded food changes taste of food waste so much, that the modified waste food is now being used as key ingredient in Michelin restaurants. The orange fungus, Neurospora intermedia, highlighted as waste making interesting flavours (New Scientist).

Anne

Interesting Radio programme couple of Fridays about separating complex materials as part of recycling more materials, there is a big push on disposable nappies as they are a big part of domestic waste. Separate components for example nappies are already being included in concrete.

Jenny

Interested in idea of Give / Take – basically jumble sale where you give things you don’t want and take things that other people don’t want. In Ryedale after the organisers have separated items that they think the local charity shops will take, then the council collects whatever is leftover using a caged vehicle, so typically end up with 7 or 8 bin full, which go to household waste stream and so some things recovered. Less Waste has a detailed toolkit on how to run a give / take event.

Is something going to revolutionise what to do with plastic waste, the microbe that will breakdown plastics so they don’t pollute the sea or get burnt? Will this be a Pandora’s box as this plastic microbes ate pipes in use etc.? Michael as a retired industrial chemist, felt that something could be found that would go for specific plastics i.e. polythene simple plastic. While polythene is used in everything from carrier bags to water pipes, it is unlikely that a microbe would be robust enough to survive outside the reactor is eating waste in and probably won’t be very effective outside that environment, so our pipes would probably still be safe. There is lots of research going on, but no perfect solution yet, and best action is not obvious – do you want plastics broken down into CO2 (possibly in the ocean) or broken down into chemicals which could be used to make new plastics (in our waste stream). A few more popular articles over the last decade on work in this area – BBC Plastic-eating bacteria can help waste self-destruct, Live Science Plastic-eating bacteria: Genetic engineering and environmental impact, CBBC Plastic-eating microbes that work in colder temperatures discovered, The Conversation How plastic-eating bacteria actually work – a chemist explains.

Tracey

I have been helping Yorwaste’s Reuse Santa fantastic set of decent toys have gone to people who couldn’t afford them otherwise, but there was still a lot of stuff that just can’t be reused, parts of toys, toys with bits missing, badly broken toys and lots of free gifts that came with food – most of it plastic.

NYC give compost bins to schools as needed.

The results are in for Let’s Talk Rubbish (YouTube introduction to consultation): Proposed changes: We also proposed a new recycling system similar to the one used in Selby. This system uses two wheelie bins: one for glass, cans, and plastics, and another for paper and cardboard, with collections alternating every fortnight. The results were 51% positive, 13% neutral, 32% negative, so the proposal to move the whole of North Yorkshire is going to committee in February. You read the full report here.

Government update on simpler recycling presents a clear vision of a standardised system across the country (part of BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours discussion on rubbish today – with James Piper, the author of the Rubbish Book and Talk Rubbish Podcast). DEFRA is supporting 4 containers: 1. paper card, 2. mixed recycling, 3. food (happy for garden waste to go together with food, but need to have an anaerobic digester – Yorwaste don’t), 4. residual waste. All collected fortnightly except food waste weekly.

Along with simpler recycling, there are also requirements for businesses with >10 employees full recycling by March 2025 i.e. recycling and food collection, then for businesses with <10 employees March 2027.

All of England needs to collecting food waste by March 2026 but North Yorkshire Council has a dispensation until 2040, due to existing waste contracts. From March 2027 plastic films will have to be included, however, if it is not viable in your area then with government agreement due to technical, practical, economic, reasons, this won’t happen everywhere.

Even 4 bins will not be everywhere, rather a minimum, for example residual waste – won’t have to be fortnightly – so in some areas with current 3 weekly will stay. It has been found that 3 and 4 weekly collections of residual waste increase recycling when food is collected separately, as people have the incentive as they don’t smelly rotting food in their residual waste.

Michael

Why is Yorwaste compost so expensive? Full of sticks but still good for covering ground to avoid exposure to weather in the winter. Written to councillor Graham White.

Yorwaste is separate to NYC, Yorwaste has a composting firm Yorganics which takes are garden waste and use it to create compost. Yorganics creates to compost through an industrial composting (higher temperature than home composting) which meets the PAS100 compost standard – no plastic, no food waste, doesn’t contain peat, locally produced so lower carbon footprint. The waste is available from both household waste recycling centres and Yorwaste’s transfer stations.

Water butts put one wherever you have a downpipe, need to keep down pipe free of slugs, leaves, etc.. We have 7 water butts and lots of water for the garden, washing windows / the car, every month apart from August. In fact rainwater is better for washing as free of dissolved solids i.e. very soft. Water butts are normally made of plastic but never had to get rid of one. All the water butts have a lid, so don’t get mosquitoes in them – wood lice like them sometimes and a few slugs. Birds wash in the inverted lid of one water butt.

Pete

While you might not want bugs in your water butt, we do need more insect, so the Sussex University citizen science Buzz Club (I am a member and so are my grandsons), suggesting putting organic material in your water butt to create hover fly lagoons, even get rare rat tailed hover flies. Tiny ponds can be made from plastic bottles with the lid off. So perhaps leave one water butt open – help save bugs. Don’t forget a put a branch to allow animals/birds/insects to crawl out if they fall into your water butt.

Countryfile last Sunday went to Woodoaks Community Farm in Hertfordshire, one of the community activities is compost making on farm. School children help turn the compost and got very excited by creepy crawlies, helping to create a lifelong interest in nature. They compost most things including lots of wood chips / coffee grounds. Countrfile also has it own compost tips.

At anytime of year cultivating your garden is a real tonic especially at this time of year – blanket on the garden.

Simon

Global Plastics Treaty Delayed – The treaty was not completed at the recent talks held in South Korea as an agreement between the over 170 participating nations could not be reached. This treaty has been in discussion since a 2022 UN Environment Assembly resolution and looks to address the full lifecycle of plastic from design to disposal with legal consequences. The key areas of disagreement were around reducing plastic production and legally binding controls on toxic materials used to make plastic. Some nations that are suffering the most from plastic pollution want to have both in place, with strong yet achievable targets. Oil and gas producing countries believe that the problem lies in the handling of plastic rather than the amount produced.
It is interesting to note that production could increase 70% by 2040 if no limits are introduced. We currently create over 400 million tons of new plastic each year, or over 1 million tons each and every day. This equates to 45,000 fully loaded shipping containers which could stack around the equator several times.

Not all is lost as talks will resume in 2025 with 2024 negotiations have raised the profile of the Plastics Treaty, exciting people about the chances to tackle what seemed an insurmountable problem and so perhaps 2025’s treaty will be even more ambitious than attempted in 2024.

Stokesley Toybank was a great success with many toys collected, then fixed by volunteers at Labman at the end of November then made available to people who needed them in the town hall. Great way of making sure more plastic doesn’t go to waste, toys get a second life, bringing extra happiness at Christmas.

Rishi Sunak is visiting the Globe Library 6th December, I have been asked to represent Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe. If I get the chance I will also mention United for Warm Homes, the Endeavour cycle route, food insecurity, Climate and Nature bill and how farming needs support to be green.

Matters Arising

Repair Cafe: Since March 2022 the repair cafes have now dealt with over 1500 items, so over 1200 items saved – lots of carbon dioxide emissions stopped, lots of products still being used and lots of money saved; 16th November Swainby Village Hall 64 items dealt with; 14th December Stokesley Globe Community Library followed by the Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe Christmas Lunch at the Station Coffee and Kitchen.

Meetings

AOB

Next Meeting

Wassail in Swainby on Wednesday 7th January 7pm – Please contact simongibbon@casav.uk for further details.