A family man has called for Kirklees Council to make it easier to recycle plastic after discovering a long list of items deemed unsuitable for his green bin.
Michael Latcham is conducting his own 28-day experiment which involves gathering up all the plastics that cannot be recycled in Kirklees.
Just days into the experiment his family of four from Honley has already amassed a pile of yoghurt pots, butter tubs, plastic trays and other food-related packaging.
The father-of-two is a self-confessed ‘faddy person’ who enjoys sorting through the household waste.
Michael said: “A lot of stuff that we buy, such as frozen pizzas, are wrapped in plastic which is not recyclable as Kirklees only recycles certain types of plastics.”
He checked the council website and compared it with Calderdale Council’s own online guides.
“Kirklees has a list of things that you cannot recycle whereas Calderdale has a list of everything that you can recycle,” he said.
As an example, yoghurt pots can be recycled via Calderdale’s weekly kerbside collection service but in Kirklees they cannot be placed in green bins.
Glass bottles and jars are part of kerbside recycling in Calderdale but in Kirklees householders have to take them to bottle banks.
Michael, who works as a self-employed flooring specialist and is married to Holly, said he had decided to look into recycling after watching a video of a woman in Los Angeles talking about the difficulties of recycling.
He also watched the BBC Blue Planet documentary which reported on the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans.
Kirklees Green Party councillor Andrew Cooper said he would like to see more plastics being recycled but the current council contract with waste firm Sita was fixed and couldn’t be changed.
“Things cannot be changed until that contract is up,” said. “When the contract comes up for renewal there is an opportunity to look again, to try to get best value.”
He said a future option could be to work with neighbouring authorities such as Calderdale and Bradford to improve the way waste is dealt with.
He added: “Another option is for Kirklees to bring the service ‘in-house.’”
Clr Cooper is urging householders to put pressure on politicians.
“I am a Green councillor and I think it is important,” he said. “We do want to reduce plastics that are out there. We have to reduce the amount of plastic that is produced in the first place.”
Clr Cooper said some green waste collected in Kirklees ended up being processed at a facility in the North East but it wasn’t clear what happened to it afterwards.
A Kirklees Council spokesman said a list of items that can be recycled could be found at www.kirklees.gov.uk/recycling
He added: “With regards to plastic, at present we can only recycle plastic bottles including pop/milk bottles; cleaning product bottles; shampoo and shower gel bottles etc for recycling through our kerbside recycling collection.
“Hard plastics (such as large child toys, garden furniture etc) are also collected for recycling at some of the Household Waste Recycling Centres.
“Plastic bottles collected from residents’ green bins are delivered to a Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Huddersfield.
“The MRF is one of the council’s waste treatments facilities, operated by a private contractor under a long-term PFI contract.
“Plastic bottles are separated manually from other green bin materials at the MRF, plastic bottles are then baled and sent to a plastics recycling processor.
“We appreciate the commitment and dedication of people like Mr Latcham who recycle everything they can but a lot of people could still recycle more just by using their green bin instead of their grey one.
“A recent analysis of household waste found that 23.6% of the average grey bin could have been recycled in the green bin. This includes paper (9.1%), plastic bottles (7.5%), card (3.6%) and food tins and drinks cans (3.4%).”
The spokesman added: “In addition to recycling more we try to encourage people to look at ways to reduce waste and are currently working with people in Ravensthorpe in partnership with Sainsbury’s to decrease food waste.
“The learning from this will be shared with people living across the district in the future.
“We have also recently received funding from DEFRA to investigate recycling other waste streams such as garden waste, food waste and other types of packaging.
“When we look at what we can recycle we need to ensure that this will be sustainable and not increase costs, as these would have to be passed on to the taxpayer.”
