An inside look at Rochdale’s recycling centre

Rochdale’s recycling centre

4 More Image(s) In Gallery

Scroll down for Video

How good are you at recycling your waste? We have all been guilty of a little laziness on occasion when it comes to putting used food packages into the right bins, but does it really have that much of an impact?

Rochdale Online reporter Kirsty Rigg put on her overalls and visited the In Vessel Composter at Rochdale recycling centre operated by Viridor to find out exactly what goes on behind the scenes and also how much of a problem contaminated waste is.

“This is actually a very skilled job”, said John Catley, who works at the Chichester Street site.

“It doesn’t look like it on the surface, but there is an awful lot of work involved, with some complicated machinery.

“Our biggest issue though, and our biggest expense, is contaminated waste”.

In other words, items that have fallen into the wrong bin are costing the taxpayer a lot of money.

Rochdale Borough Council has to fork out £3,000 every time a truck full of waste has to be rejected by the centre because it is so contaminated, approximately £308 per tonne, and it happens frequently.

John added: “We handle as much failed material as we can, we even have people working here especially to deal with it who will stand on a picking belt going through it all, sifting out all sorts of things. We would really like to get the message across that a little care in putting the right rubbish into the right place would make a huge difference to everyone.”

Rochdale Council is the second council in the Greater Manchester region to move to a three-weekly household waste, with a view to improving recycling across the borough and reducing the costs for landfill.

The changes, which started in October 2015, were brought in after the borough was ranked as having the worst recycling record in Greater Manchester with only 35.5% of its waste recycled compared to Stockport at the top with 64%.

The changes have brought signs of improvement. In fact, recycling figures in Rochdale have increased from 31% in January 2015 to 49% in January 2016, which the council says should continue to improve over the coming months.

John added: “The improvements are obvious here, it really has made a difference. What we need now is for everyone to take a little more care with their waste so we can do our jobs in the best possible way.”

20% of the waste produced in Greater Manchester households is organic garden waste, and up to 30% is organic kitchen waste. IVC (In-Vessel Composting) is carried out at the Rochdale site, which turns this waste into a valuable, resourceful material for farm land and compost.

However, first it has to be broken down through an industrial shredder and then goes into a highly-efficient process that transforms rubbish into a usable substance.

Councillor Jacqui Beswick, Cabinet Member for Housing and Environment, was also on site for a visit, she said: “It was really informative and really interesting to see how things worked behind the scenes at the recycling centre. I think the tour was very well structured and it was easy to understand the processes that they go through.

“What I thought was important was the amount of contaminated waste that they are dealing with.

"There is a lot of good work being carried out here, they are doing a great job”.