Minimisation of municipal solid waste and diversion from landfill are necessary for the UK to manage waste sustainably and achieve legislative compliance. A survey of householder attitudes and experiences of a trial for minimising household food waste from waste collection in the county of West Sussex, UK is described. The minimisation method used the Green Cone food digester, designed for garden installation. A postal questionnaire was distributed to 1,000 householders who had bought a cone during the trial and a total of 433 responses were received. The main reason for people buying the Green Cone had been concerns about waste (88%), with 78% and 67% of respondents respectively claiming to have participated in recycling and home composting in the last 30 days. The waste material most frequently put in the digester was cooked food (91%), followed by fruit waste, vegetable matter and bones/ meat. Some respondents were using it for garden and animal waste from pets. Most users found the Green Cone performed satisfactorily. Approximately 60% of respondents had seen a reduction of 25-50% in the amount of waste they normally put out for collection, with analysis showing reported levels of reduction to be significant (p < 0.05). Additional weight surveys by householders recorded an average of 2.7 kg/hh/wk diverted to the food digester.
Local authorities in the UK have been set challenging new targets for recycling household waste for 2005. This means many of them are urgently trying to determine which parameters in kerbside schemes are most important for increasing recycling rates. In this work information from previous kerbside schemes is used to plan significant improvements in an existing scheme in Horsham District, UK, and trialled using 1,000 homes including a control group. It used fortnightly collection of residual waste with sets of recyclables collected on alternate weeks. The new scheme resulted in improvements of participation rates from 72% to 84%, and set-out rates of 45% to 59% (falling to 76% and 50% respectively some months later). Details on participation and set-out for different groups of materials is given, as well as levels of excess waste and participation in the collection of garden waste.
Sixteen percent of household waste in the UK is handled at Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC). These facilities will play an important role if the UK is to achieve the national target of recycling 25% of household waste by 2005, as most sites now provide containers for recyclables as well as a mixed waste pile. However, few published studies have been conducted regarding the activities of HWRC site users and the composition of waste that is delivered, especially to the mixed waste pile. This paper presents the results of a site survey in Sussex, UK and discusses the role of HWRC in handling household waste.During the week of sampling 969 site users were monitored. The target group was those depositing only on the mixed waste pile. Two main categories of waste dominated. The first, identified as garden waste, was deposited by 37% of the target group and represents approximately 20% of arisings by observed volume. The second was miscellaneous waste bagged, present in 34% of loads and equating to approximately 21% of arisings by observed volume. Despite the availability of containers for segregating recyclable and compostable materials, 29% of users deposited these onto the mixed waste pile. The site was clearly not able to operate at its optimum. The reasons for this and potential solutions are presented.
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