Bag Sorting Scheme Coming to Carnaby Household Waste Centre

If you take a bag of rubbish to the Carnaby Household waste site near Bridlington you could be asked to sort through it for any recyclable material.

A bag sorting trial is being rolled out to more household waste centres in the East Riding including the Carnaby site near Bridlington.

The idea is to ensure as much waste as possible is recycled by providing facilities at the tips where residents can sort through their bagged rubbish.

Service Manager for Waste disposal - Sarah Atkinson - says a significant proportion of stuff taken to the tips in black bags could be recycled.

A trial was launched at the Driffield household waste recycling site in March by East Riding of Yorkshire Council to encourage visitors to sort through their bags of mixed materials that they take along to get rid of.

The aim was to make sure even more items were recycled, and thanks to residents getting behind the scheme, it led to a 3.5% increase in the recycling figure for the Driffield site each month.

Now this month the council has rolled out the scheme to household waste recycling sites at Carnaby, Pocklington, Weel near Beverley, Airmyn near Goole, and Humberfield at Hessle.

And it is due to be introduced at the four remaining sites - Holme on Spalding Moor, Hornsea, Withernsea and Preston – by August.

The council is urging residents to sort their bags of waste before taking them to household waste recycling sites.

Sarah Atkinson says that when the scheme gets underway, facilities will be provided to help residents route out the 30 percent of recyclable rubbish which is often in black bags.

At all five new sites, a sorting table is provided, with gloves, a litter picker, paper towels and anti-bacterial handwash.

Site staff direct residents with bags or boxes of waste to visit the table so they can sort through their own waste.

Recycling containers for each type of item are sited next to the table – so people don’t have to travel across the site to the various skips.

Items that can’t be recycled can then be placed into a site’s general waste skip.

Leaflets advising people of the new system are being handed out at each site, alongside new signs being put up.

It is hoped he move will lead to more items being recycled.

During the trial at the Driffield site, the bag sorting area resulted in more than six tonnes of waste being diverted to recycling containers, which would otherwise have gone into the general waste skip.

Overall, there was 50 tonnes less of general waste collected in the containers on site - a lot of which is believed to be down to residents sorting more waste before going to the site.

The Driffield site’s overall recycling figure was an impressive 86% for April and May, meaning 86% of all the items taken along by residents could be recycled or reused.

The remainder was used as refuse derived fuel and sent to be burnt at a specialised plant in order to generate electricity. Nothing is sent to landfill.

Councillor Chris Matthews, the council’s portfolio holder for environment and climate change, said:

“I’m extremely pleased that the initial trial was supported by residents, and thanks to their extra efforts, they helped even more waste get recycled.

“Now we have introduced the bag sorting scheme at five other sites, and I’ve no doubt that residents there will do the same and show their support, because the East Riding is one of the best recycling areas in the country.”

In an extra move, a skip especially for carpets and mattresses has been introduced at the Driffield site to help residents recycle even more of their waste.