The lowdown - how the new triple stack recycling wheelie boxes will work in practice

NOT for a long time has a topic like the new recycling system for the legacy Antrim borough area generated such discussion locally.

So the Antrim Guardian decided to take a look to show readers what the system will entail on a practical level before it is introduced later this month.

The weekly ‘wheelie box’ collections will finally be implemented in Antrim, Randalstown, Crumlin, Toome and Templepatrick in mid- September.

As part of a long-awaited new waste harmonisation programme, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council is introducing the collection, which it describes as ‘a modern and more effective way to sort and collect recyclables’.

The change was approved in 2019 but delayed because of the Covid pandemic and other factors.

The new recycling container will replace the current blue mixed recycling bin, allowing residents to recycle even more, including glass bottles and jars, textiles, paper and cardboard, food and drink cans, plastic pots, tubs and trays.

Council says the wheelie box ‘will offer greater capacity and more frequent collections, weekly rather than fortnightly, making it easier for residents to recycle more materials from home.

Alongside this change, a new, smaller black bin will be introduced for residual waste.

Michael Laverty, Director of Sustainability at the Council said: “The new recycling service will allow households to recycle their glass and textiles along with their other recyclables in their new wheelie boxes, which have been operating very successfully throughout the rest of the Borough for more than a decade.

“Harmonising collections across these remaining areas will create a more efficient service, save money on waste disposal costs, and help the Council to meet its recycling targets of 70% by 2035. This is another step in our ongoing efforts to create a cleaner, greener Borough that protects and preserves our environment for future generations.”

Residents will receive full information by post closer to the rollout, including details about the new bins and how to use them.

The council ran a series of information sessions in August, and residents are invited to come along and hear more about the new service, which quelled some concerns, but not all.

The move comes as the council in neighbouring Mid and East Antrim has decided to revert to using blue bins instead of kerbside boxes in parts of the borough, including Ballymena and Carrickfergus.

Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council received £2.6m funding from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to support the harmonisation of waste collection.

There has been some opposition to the plans, and thousands have signed a petition protesting against the plans.

At a council meeting last Tuesday, members heard that dedicated kerbside sort vehicles are now in production with delivery of first vehicles accepted. All 16 vehicles are due to be delivered this week, commencing September 1.

The phased rollout of the new collection service is still on target for the week commencing September 15, and it is envisaged that the services will be fully implemented after nine weeks.

The council is continuing to work with AWS (Amazon) to ‘establish a dedicated Customer Service assistant to support the Waste and Council customer service team during the project roll-out and provide residents with a 24-hour information service’.

Officers hosted 22 information public drop-in information sessions across the legacy Antrim areas ahead of the roll-out, with approximately 370 people attending

In June 2019, members approved an economic appraisal and Equality Screening document for the provision of a 180L black bin collection service in legacy Antrim and the weekly collection of dry recyclables through a wheelie box (triple stack) container by an external organisation, subject to receipt of funding from Central Government with an estimated savings of £3 million over ten years.

In 2019, a short survey was available on the council website and in the September edition of Borough Life.

Face to face surveys were also carried out by council staff at events and various locations in the Borough during the consultation period.

A total of 832 surveys/responses were completed. 84% stated that they wanted to recycle more.

Of those not recycling glass, textiles or batteries, 61% said it was because there was no home collection;

With home collection, an additional 10% stated that they would recycle glass, 9% more would recycle textiles and 15% would recycle batteries.

60% indicated that the proposed changes provide sufficient capacity

Last week, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council let the Guardian follow a wheelie box from Newtownabbey to the nearby Bryson depot, before heading out to Toome to see where the glass ends up.

Paper and card is sent to Northern Ireland-based companies like Huhtamaki for recycling into items like egg boxes and coffee cup holders, while plastics go to Cherry in Lurgan, where they are made into pipes for civil engineering and agriculture.

Cans generally stay in the UK and get made straight back into more cans.

We arrived in Newtownabbey on a Thursday morning, where the boxes have been in use since 2013.

The lorry staff do an excellent job and the boxes are emptied in no time.

Are they as flimsy as people fear, especially when empty?

A hook on the backs of boxes can be threaded into the metal wheeling mechanism for more stability.

After emptying, the stacks are replaced with the top box inserted into the second box - with the boxes all now empty, this makes the stack more bottom heavy and less likely to blow over.

The lorry has dedicated compartments for each type of waste.

One complaint has been that by sorting recycling into boxes, residents are ‘doing the council’s job for them’ - but it’s not as simple as that.

Paper and card go on top, rinsed plastics in the middle - it helps of the bottles are squashed and resealed to make more space - and glass in the bottom.

This means that all the recycling stays relatively clean and uncontaminated - a trip to the Bryson depot, where blue bin recycling is still also processed - will show what a difference that makes.

The separated recycling is much easier to process for the onward journey - to local companies who require clean and high quality recycling, whereas most blue bin waste has to be exported elsewhere.

The vehicles are all automated, making it as safe as possible for the staff - push a button in the cab, the doors open and the materials come out.

Wales, which has a similar system, is said to be the second best recycling company in the world.

In Europe, streamed recycling is commonplace.

After the lorries are weighed, card and bottles come out of the sides of the lorry and plastics out of the back.

Then we’re off to Enva in Toome to see how the glass is dealt with.

Peter Toth is Team Lead at Enva and is passionate about his job.

He’s proud of the fact that glass leaving the site has a purity of 99.6%

Glass can be recycled over and over again, and can be transformed into a wide variety of everyday products. providing an eco-friendly alternative to landfill disposals, and yearly glass wastage.

As well as going back to make new bottles and jars, recycled glass can be used in areas such as aggregates, manufacture of bricks, sports turf, fibreglass insulation and even water filtration.

The Toome plant can process up to 100,000 tonnes of cullet - the recycled broken or waste glass used in glass-making.

The glass is sorted into colours and goes through several processes to remove metal and paper labels before it is made into a very fine, ground substance which goes back into several different industries.

What Enva does not want, is ceramics - Peter says it’s like ‘Kryptonite for glass’.

Ceramic has a much higher melting point than glass and just a tiny piece can get lodged in nozzles feeding the furnace and effect purity - and someone has to come and poke it out.

A camera and light are used to detect ceramics and remove them from the stream.

However this has meant that bottles such as those containing Baileys, have to be sorted separately, because it is so dark.

Glass isn’t just glass - some decorative types, for example, cannot be put into the boxes, as they contains greenhouse gases that are released during the melting process, so it’s better just to put containers like bottles and jars in the box.

A large magnet is used to whisk out any metals contaminating the glass. And of course, the cleaner the glass, the better.

Peter says: “You’ll not believe what some people are putting in with glass and the co-mingled stuff can cause big problems.”

At the end of the day, he says, sorting recycling before it’s collected helps everyone.

“A machine can do a lot, but a human being is always a necessity and it can be a very challenging job, like if there’s an old bin bag that’s been in there for a month and a half.” he said.

“We do have things like an AI camera - that helps us detect dangerous things like gas canisters.

“And we have magnets and x-rays and sensors but someone still has to stand and sort things out.

“There are no fairies or Oompah Loompahs doing the job.

“It might be strange for people to separate their own recycling, but it can be hard for people at the other end to do their job when there is thousands of tonnes of stuff coming through here and they’re having to take unpleasant things out.

“As well as being considerate, quality is key. It’s better for the environment too.”

Each colour of glass goes through several machines and is refined over and over again until it trickles out as the very fine product called cullet.

Our waste is less being seen as rubbish, but more as a resource, creating local jobs and putting money back into the economy.

Peter says: “You can bury your money, or burn it, or send it to landfill or you can recycle your money with container glass, over and over again, or help to make foam glass, which you will drive over every day, as it’s used to make road surfaces.”