Cambridge recycling waste is still being taken 400 miles away to Northern Ireland for sorting, despite previous claims a UK mainland facility could open “within the first half of this year”.
Earlier this year Re-Gen was awarded a contract to take the recycling collected by Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council.
Under the contract the waste is taken to a materials recycling facility (MRF) in Newry.
However, a press release issued by the city council in February said Re-Gen was planning to open a new facility on the UK mainland.
It said: “The Re-Gen MRF is based in Newry, Northern Ireland, so initially this is where the blue bin recycling will be taken for sorting.
“However, Re-Gen say that, within the first half of this year, it will take over a MRF on the UK mainland.
“This will negate the need to transport the recycling to Northern Ireland.”
A full council meeting this week (July 24) a member of the public asked what had happened to this plan.
Suzie Williams said she “objected strongly” to the city’s waste being transported to Northern Ireland and argued this was contributing to global warming.
Ms Williams claimed that by choosing the site in Newry the authority had “maximised CO2 emissions” and asked how the procurement exercise run by the authority had got this “so scandalously wrong”.
She also asked for an update on the previous claim that a mainland facility would be acquired by Re-Gen.
Councillor Jean Glasberg (Green Party) also raised this issue at the meeting, highlighting that it was now July, but said there were “still no signs that a new UK mainland MRF has been acquired by Re-Gen, or that such an acquisition is due to take place”.
She asked what steps had been taken to “investigate this apparent failure”.
Councillor Rosy Moore (Labour), cabinet member for climate action and environment, argued there had been no “failure” as the contract to Re-Gen had been awarded based on the Newry facility, and that the plans to acquire a mainland facility had only been made known afterwards.
Cllr Moore said Re-Gen had offered the best option in terms of cost and quality of the processing, as she said they were able to take the full range of recyclable materials already being collected by the authority.
Cllr Moore went on to state that Re-Gen was still continuing to pursue acquiring a UK mainland MRF, but said she did not currently have an update on this facility yet.
She also explained that reference to the facility opening in the first half of this year actually referred to the first half of the contract year, which she said had started in March.
Cllr Moore added that recycling was a “global market” and said while transporting the waste to Newry was “not ideal”, she said it was “actually just a drop in the ocean of transportation involved in recycling”.
Cllr Moore said she also wanted to highlight the waste hierarchy and said people should always look to reduce their waste and reuse things first.
