In Vessel Composting (Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats)

Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats <info@oxfordshirelibdems.org.uk>

In Vessel Composting

November 6, 2006 3:00 PM
By Cllr Zoe Patrick in Full Council

The reason for bringing this motion to council today is because we know we have to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. Anyone who attended the waste briefings held earlier this year will be aware of the millions of pounds we could end up paying in fines if we continue as we are to fill holes in the ground. It cannot continue. I was delighted to hear that we have agreed to the Waste Partnership and now we need to move forward. Obviously the details of the collection schemes in themselves are the responsibility of district councils, but of course, we need to do much more collaborative thinking with districts on this because our goals are the same - to reduce our waste.

Why in-vessel composting? Well I will spare you all a technical speech but this is an industrial form of composting biodegradable waste which is the method accepted by DEFRA for processing catering waste. And anyone needing to find out more only needs to click on the DEFRA website.

Over 50% of all household waste has the potential to be recycled by composting and many of us do have our own composters at home. But normally, most of this waste ends up in sites where it rots, produces greenhouse gases. What the IVC process does is take this waste and transform it into a useable end product - compost. In Somerset they have already started using in-vessel composting and have a plant that will process 25,000 tonnes each year of food and green waste.

So this motion is asking that we move forward on this and ask for tenders to provide such a plant so that our district councils can move to weekly collections as soon as possible. Kitchen waste does form a large part of the residual waste, once we have take out paper, glass, cans etc. for recycling, so we do need to ensure that the kitchen waste which is the one element which the public worry about because if left for 2 weeks can be seen to be a hazard with smells, maggots and animals. However the County Council is the disposal authority and needs to provide those facilities, so we must not be backwards in coming forwards with providing this technology. I would urge people here to support this motion and help to speed up the process and take the example of Somerset and other councils in leading the way with waste disposal.