Competition, the Market & Recycling

Being of a certain age, and remembering rationing and powdered eggs, I have always considered recycling to be a socially responsible thing to do – good for the environment and good for society as a whole. However, up until recently I, and I suspect many others, have been labouring under the illusion that it doesn’t matter where you recycle your stuff so long as it is recycled.

For example, back in the days before kerbside collection I would take mine and my mother-in-law’s recycling with me on my way to visit my Dad on a Sunday and deposit the stuff in a Tescos car park on the way. On the way home I would have my Dad’s recycling and deposit it in the same place. I knew that I was depositing Newham, Redbridge and Islington waste in Haringey but I thought I was doing them a favour by improving their recycling figures.

Likewise, after my dad died, I would take my recycling over to the Luxborough Lane Dump [an Essex County Council facility just outside the Redbridge border] because at the time there were no recycling facilities at the Chigwell Road dump.

As an aside down that Lane on the left is the Spurs training ground and one would often see players practising bending free kicks around a cardboard defensive wall. I often wondered why they didn’t actually play those cardboard players as they seemed to be far better at defending set pieces than the real thing. But that was some time ago and I digress.

Then something strange happened. Essex CC put the barriers up and started charging non-Essex CC residents £3 per visit. This was about 2004-ish and fortunately not long before the Chigwell Road site was upgraded to a full Recycling and Reclamation Centre [RRC]. Nevertheless, I continued to use that site for a while using my son’s council tax bill [he lives in Brentwood]. At the time I recall the Redbridge Cabinet member [then Cllr Weinberg] being outraged and saying that there would be no retaliation.

But things have now moved on. And you now need ID to enter the Chigwell Road tip for free. The rules have recently been relaxed to one form of ID, but you still need some evidence that you are an ELWA resident or know someone who is a resident and willing to lend you their CT bill.

Waste is an expensive business, as highlighted earlier, and we seem to be entering a period of protectionism by Local Authorities. The swiftness that public cardboard recycling facilities have been withdrawn from eg Craven Gardens Car park and Sainsburys Chase Lane is evident, even when the new kerbside cardboard recycling facility has not yet been fully promoted.

But then I am thrown into total confusion. Tescos are kicking out council recycling facilities from their car parks and installing their own, as already done at Barkingside, (see the rather prescient conclusion to that post, even if I say so myself) with a reported potential gain of £25million. Councils are complaining that they are losing £50-80K per year which is re-invested in local infrastructure.

Er! If those councils are making a profit out of recycling and Tescos see a market opportunity why are we, along with Havering, Barking & Dagenham and Newham paying £98 per tonne to get rid of ours?