February’s Waste Thoughts – 2024

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

  • Waste:
  • Clothes:
    • Reduce your clothes buying, give wearable clothes you don’t want to charity shops and take unwearable items to textile banks, to avoid them become a waste problem in another country.
    • In Middlesbrough Neuthread turn old clothes into new garments and this year they will be on the catwalk as part of London Fashion Week.
  • Recycle / Reuse / Circularity:
    • The Guisborough Giant a multi-material art work from the Guisborough Residents Assembly will use upcyclced materials.
    • Will building upcycling work as well in Middlesbrough as it has at Kings Cross?
    • Recycle at Boots, locally they may not take blister packs, but they do take cosmetic and beauty products in Northallerton. And Rymans recycle pens.
    • Great circular juice bar in Newcastle, Earthlings, getting juice around Newcastle in reused glass bottles without any plastic.
    • Why doesn’t doorstep reuse work local as it does in Australia?
  • Food:
  • Repair Cafes:
    • Great to see so many children at last weeks Repair Cafe, hope they tell their friends.
    • Help people to know how to help before coming to a Repair Cafe, empty your vacuum, unpick your zip, buy the spare parts,….
    • The sewing group at our latest Repair Cafe had their customers helping with repairs, meant people learned repair skills, got a kick from being involved and meant more things were repaired.
  • The Coat of Hopes is coming to Roots farm shop soon.

Actions:

  • Simon – look into ways to let people know how they can help before attending a repair cafe – web pages / D&S articles.

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 13th February 2023 CASaV Waste Group

Updates

Fred

Bernard Clark, the project leader for the Guisborough Arts Centre project, is running a new project called the Guisborough Giant, which will involve artworks made for any and every material including upcycled materials. The project is part of Guisra (Guisborough Residents Assembly), which “is an association determined to fight for a better town for its residents. As a truly democratic group we aim to demand the improvements the town so badly needs. The most important thing Guisra will achieve is turning Guisborough into one of the most liveable towns in the UK. We are not about ad-hoc minor changes to deal with issues but rather proactive identification of how the town can be vastly improved.”

Making sure you take wearable clothes to charity shops is a great way to make sure your clothes are used for longer. However, rubbish clothes taken to charity shops can become a waste issue being exported to Africa, as Simon Reeve showed recently in “Wilderness”, where all the Kalahri bushmen now wear secondhand winter clothes from Europe, great these clothes are reused, but can be destructive of local clothing ecosystem. See Tracey’s comment below.

Last year GEG (Guisborough Eco Group) took 2 bikes from Great Ayton, these were picked up by Tony from Route 1 Coffee House CIC in Redcar – like Sustrans they take bikes do repair and restore to riding state. 2 more bikes have now been offered from Guisborough.

GEG’s Repair Cafes are going monthly still looking for more repairers to cover a wider range of repairs building on the textiles and bikes currently being repaired.

Interested in Christmas Trees in pots, we need to start early to help people to be more sustainable at Christmas.

Tracey

If you have old clothes then don’t just dump them on a charity shop, as if the clothes are beyond use then you are just giving the charity shop rubbish. So give wearable clothes to charity shops they can sell, wearable but unsaleable clothes will go to rags and may still generate a small amount of money for the charity. Clothes that can’t be worn you should put them in a textile bank – the good stuff will still be sold, some will go to rags, other stuff will be bulked up and could end up going to unmanaged landfill sites abroad. Best chance to avoid clothes ending up is to use the larger charities who are likely to have procedures in place to manage clothes sustainably – Oxfam, Salvation Army, Cancer Research, …

Of course the best way to reduce the amount of clothes going to waste is just to buy fewer better quality clothese.

The “Garden Waste Licenses” for 2024/25 now on sale £42 renew, £45 first time – NYC Garden Waste Collection. It is likely that the council will be keener to encourage people to compost at home where possible in future.

NYC is restructuring all its departments as part of the consolidation of the recently established unitary council. Waste will probably be the last department to be restructured.

NYC has been given a dispensation from the requirement to start weekly food waste collection by March 2026 (promised in 2021 for 2023, but delayed due to pandemic), as the contracts with Allerton Waste Recovery Park run until 2042 and include food waste within the general waste collected. So North Yorkshire won’t be introducing food waste collection until a to be agreed date after 2026.

The requirements for waste consistent collections across the UK will be the baked into the new cross North Yorkshire waste contracts.

Jenny

How are caterers responsible to sustainably deal with surplus and waste food? Caterers fill in self-assessment license on which they report what they do with waste – no obligation to compost or dispose of food separately. A caterer may just put the waste into their required commercial waste collection. In 2026 when weekly food collection become mandatory, this will include commercial premises needing to have food waste collection, but small caterers may be exempted.

Customer should require their caterers to handle waste food properly. May be more difficult to deal with caterers’ surplus food, as these are bound by environmental health legislation and so could be challenging due to time the food has been out on a buffet etc..

I am making sure that all NHS conferences I attend has a plant based menu and has a plan in place for any food waste generated.

Having reported that Low Green has a smell of gas, Northern Gas Grid said there were no gas pipes under the green, however Norther Gas Grid finally investigated and found 4 gas leaks. So persistence has stopped 4 local methane leaks.

A friend has found our Repair Cafes and they are now a regular date for the whole family, as they really love them.

Next week at for the first time at London Fashion Week Neuthread, from Teesside which is making new clothes out of old clothes, will be on the catwalk.  As Neeraj from Neuthread put it: “We operate a circular economy and are proud to have a fashion brand that utilises our waste retail textiles and transforms them into something incredible. We are unique in that we repurpose in this way, and to be making such a difference from our home in the North-East is exceptionally exciting. We can’t wait to showcase Neuthread at London Fashion Week – the concept is game-changing.” You can buy Neuthread’s clothes from their online store or at Daisychain’s Megastore in the Team Valley. Neuthread are are part of Daisychain a charity empowering and supporting autistic and neurodiverse individuals, so you can also volunteer to help with this project.

Wendy

An article in yesterday’s Guardian highlighted how landfill sites, particularly in Asia, are a vast source of methane leaking into the atmosphere. In places like India landfills make a significant contribution to local economies through the waste pickers who ensure much material is reused or recycled, but there is no attempt made to trap the methane emitted by rotting food and other organic materials within the waste.

Last Saturday’s Repair Cafe in Stokesley felt different with lots of children and lots more apple juice being drunk, hopefully they will all tell their friends who will get their parents to bring their things along to get mended at future repair cafes.

Finnish company (New Scientist) has developed a process of grinding up chicken or fish bones to add to meat products to reduce food waste. The company accepts that eating less meat would have a bigger effect on climate change, but feels that their process is a step in the right direction.

Anne

Boots in Northallerton has a big box for recycling makeup and beauty products. Once you register for the Recycle at Boots scheme, you scan the packaging from makeup and beauty products you are returning and then get points on your Boots Advantage card

Should we be putting an article in D&S which give people some tips and tricks, basically what to do in preparation before attending a repair cafe – so a mixture of simple fixes you can do yourself, such as make sure you vacuum cleaners is empty before coming because it isn’t sucking properly, or how to unpick a zip and bring the replacement.
Action: Simon – look into ways to let people know how they can help before attending a repair cafe – web pages / D&S articles.

As spring comes on I will be going around the local cafes encouraging them to display their Refill signs prominently.

The Salvation Army identifies pure cotton clothes from which the threads can be reused even if the garment is beyond use.

Kate

At the last Repair Cafe we advertised that we would train people in how to use their sewing machine and so a number of people came and left with confidence to use their sewing machines.

What we hadn’t planned was to get people involved in other repair activities, but not only did we show some people how to darn their own clothes, but we also had somebody unpicking their own zip, not only did this mean the zip repair was a lot better use of the repairers’ time, allowing other repairs to be completed, but we were also making people part of the repair cafe process. So these people left not only with the buzz of having repaired items, but also having picked up new skills and been part of the team.

Earthlings in West Newcastle is a fantastic vegan cafe, but more than that it is a circular business as they make / deliver fresh fruit smoothies in glass bottles around Newcastle – circular reuse bottles without plastic labels. There is more to the ethos as described in a short North East Bylines article – “Earthlings The Healing Cafe is a vegan juice bar but it is so much more than that – it is a place for the community to heal – to eat well, to learn well, to share well and to live well. It is a community.”

Rymans in Northallerton as part of Ryman’s environmental policy recycle old pens / propelling pencils.

The Coat of Hopes was made for COP26 with people putting together squares made into a big long coat. The squares encapsulated what they hoped COP26 would achieve to help our world. Since then the coat has been on tour – people talking about it / adding to it. Currently it is making its way from Edinburgh to York, the coat is just about to leave Newcastle on 18th and will arrive in Darlington on 25th February – full journey. After Darlington it will be off to Helmsley and will stop off at the Roots Farm Shop on the way, date to be confirmed.

SowNorthern is holding their “Potato day and seed swap” on 3rd March at Norton, Stockton. SowNorthern aims to encourage and support people to grow their own food to get all the benefits of fresh food and doing right by the planet.

Joy

Impressed how reuse appears to just work locally in Australia, people put unwanted stuff outside their front door and people just pick it up, find all sorts of things we picked up some fall safe flooring to make floor gymnastics safer. We have lots of web based tools – such as the Facebook “For Free in Stokesley“, Freecycle, but use appears to be limited, why?

We have stopped looking at sell-by dates on milk, instead if it smells ok and tastes ok then we drink it. Most UK supermarkets have now scrapped best before dates on fruit and vegetables, instead telling people to look / smell / taste. Coop have removed best before dates from their own brand yoghurts suggesting you sniff instead before eating.

Pete

Large scale upcycling – around Kings Cross the listed gasometers have been converted into luxury flats, not sure this would work in Middlesbrough, property prices would not support the cost of upcycling. However, the old Binns department store building is going to receive £2million of levelling up funds to convert to arts/music centre with the basement adapted as housing for homeless.

Taking composting to a different level will be getting 40 tiger worms with food waste, once they have bred will be able to give them away at Repair Cafes.

David Hugill

Recent cold local weather just highlights the differences between climate and weather, and how while the climate is warming local weather is becoming more extreme and less predictable as more energy goes into planetary systems.

North Yorkshire Council is getting interested in Repair Cafes, and thinking about including them within the waste strategy, with specific interest from Easingwold.

Great to see people visiting Allerton Waste Recovery Park, very informative to see what happens to our waste, most of it being burnt to generate electricity, after separation of food waste which is fed into an anaerobic digester where it generates methane which is burned to produce additional electricity. It is an incinerator as while named an energy from waste plant at only 218GWh.pa it is relatively small compared to a power station such as Hartlepool which generates 17,500GWh.pa or the wind turbines off Redcar which generate 520GWh.pa.

Worm farming is getting popular with farmers looking into it, but the big challenge is how to control vermin.

Simon

The need to reduce waste is still receiving far too little attention, with increasing numbers of incinerators (energy from waste) plants being planned, delays in deposit return schemes, none of the planned extensions of the extended producer responsibility schemes.

Whether we burn our waste or landfill it, it still have a huge impact on our planet. Incinerators produce immediate carbon dioxide so are not good for our attempts to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere to keep the global temperature rise down now, where landfills if not properly managed can release methane for decades and while methane is a more potent greenhouse gas it is shorter lived in the atmosphere. So a CO2 burp now from lots of new incinerators may well be worse for climate change then a slow release of methane from landfills, however well managed landfills don’t release methane as it is captured.

Also incinerators produce a lot of ash, for example Allerton Waste Recovery Park processes 330,000tonnes of waste a year, but it produces over 70,000tonnes of ash which is turned into construction materials.

Matter Arising

Repair Cafes:

  • 20th January Swainby – over 60 items dealt with
  • 10th February Stokesley – over 80 items dealt with, and Coop providing free tea / coffee / sugar.
  • 16th March Swainby
  • For the Stokesley on 14th April Repair Cafe we will be joined by Sustrans who will provide bike safety checks – health and single fault fix.

AOB

Fred came across clothes designer who may want old clothes.

You don’t have to have garden waste license and more councils are now encouraging people to compost at home.

Food waste – local Asda food waste goes to a farm.

Methane from land fill – at Allerton Park methane is captured and used to be just burnt off, may now be combined with biogas to generate electricity

Next Meeting – 12th March