Waste collection has changed in Cumbria – and it got us thinking about where it all actually ends up.
From collection frequency changes to charges for multiple garden bins, we couldn’t help put start poking around behind the scenes.
Every year we produce over 184,000 tonnes of waste in Cumbria, that’s the same weight as over four million Herdwick sheep.
For most of us, once it’s in the bin, it’s out of sight and out of mind, we don’t always have the time to sit and worry about it all.
But it’s got to go somewhere, and it might surprise you to hear that actually, it doesn’t all end up in landfill.
In fact, there’s a whole hidden world of how our waste is processed in Cumbria, so we set out to explore it.
We were invited to Hespin Wood, based just outside Carlisle, which is one of the county’s two big waste sites that deal with our black bin waste and recycling.
From the outside, these facilities are unassuming, there’s no overwhelming stench or towers of black smoke coming from them.
They’re fairly tucked away and from a distance, they just look like great big warehouses.
The sites are managed by Biffa and Cumbria Waste Group, which have a 25-year contract with both Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness’ councils to look after and process the entire county’s waste.
Driving into the facility – known as a resource park – you quickly spot little hints at what happens to our waste behind the scenes.
Short, but large towers of compacted, colourful, cubes of recycling are neatly stored in several open spaces on site.
It’s immediately striking, and a little depressing, to see even just a small amount of what we’re throwing out.
On site, there are two main processing facilities.
The first is the Material Recycling Facility, known as an MRF or murf, where our kerbside and drop-site recycling waste is sent.
The second is a Mechanical Biological Treatment facility, or MBT, which diverts our black bin waste away from landfill.
Once I’m suited and booted with a hard hat, goggles, hi-viz jacket, and gloves, I’m taken to see the MRF and its storage facilities first.
The MRF site is a very loud environment – so we’re quickly given earplugs – and while it doesn’t smell totally disgusting, it does smell like soggy cardboard.
I’m given a tour around the facility by CEO Andy Chant and some of his team members.
Every day, the facility processes thousands of tonnes of our recycling.
Piles of plastic, cardboard, cans and glass are separated out in different parts of the warehouses on site and most of them tower above us in size.
I find it almost impossible to not start picking out brand names from these piles of things to be recycled – all the big contenders are in there, piled on top of each other.
A heavy-duty digger truck takes scoops of these piles and drops them into a hopper, where the sorting process begins.
An MRF is best imagined as a series of dizzyingly fast-moving conveyor belts and hoppers that rise several metres off the ground and have various clever methods of sorting out the things we send to recycling.
While the machines are smart enough to sort plastics by colour, items by weight, and remove labels – they can’t thoroughly clean our recycling or remove things like the aluminium caps from the top of wine bottles.
It’s at this point I’m told that we’re all far more important to the recycling process than we may initially realise.
Without public support, the recycling process is much more difficult than it needs to be.
Things that can be recycled get sent to be processed as black bin waste needlessly if they’re covered in food, or just not meant to be in kerbside recycling or dangerous.
During my visit, I’m also told managing the fire risks posed by stray vapes and batteries is a constant battle, and that people often make mistakes when recycling from home.
One staff member tells me a deckchair was once sent through the MRF which caused the entire site to come to a stop for over 45 minutes.
When you’re processing 90 tonnes of recycling daily, losing 45 minutes can quickly become a problem.
I’m also shown vapes, gas canisters and electronics like mobile phones that are saved from the MRF – all of which can pose fire risks if not rescued.
Andy tells me trying to communicate what people can and can’t recycle over and over again is also a massive amount of work and it has to be done across generations of people.
Recycling might seem simple in practice, but I’m told it can easily throw you a curveball, for example, did you know you can’t recycle a pizza box if it’s covered in food or grease?
Looking down at the sea of waste rushing past us on conveyor belts, you are confronted with the reality of how detached from our waste we truly are.
Speaking with Graham Harrison, Cumberland Council’s assistant interim director of climate and waste, he tells me he believes it should be ‘sacrilegious’ to not recycle recyclable materials.
He adds: “We live in a throwaway society. We are way off fully addressing the impact of our throw away lifestyles and the damage it is having on our environment.”
Staff members also tell me they notice seasonal changes in the recycling rushing past them – during Covid, they said they faced a massive amount of single-use plastic packaging for barbecue meat coming through.
They add that 2020’s Christmas also proved one of the busiest times for massive amounts of sweet tubs and plastic food packaging coming through the doors.
While recycling is crucial – it’s also suddenly become strangely contentious.
Over time, the classic ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ slogan has dwindled down to just recycle – which doesn’t help in the fight against things like single-use plastic and the damage it does to the environment.
Activist organisations like Greenpeace have even claimed plastic recycling is a myth because it’s not able to be infinitely recycled like metal is.
But while Government intervention is needed – without recycling, more would be sent to black bin waste processing and more would end up in landfill, so while it may not be perfect, it is still really important.
Leaving the MRF, I’m walked past dozens of shiny compacted cubes of bound recycling that have been processed and are ready for third party reuse.
I’m later guided to the Mechanical Biological Treatment Facility – known as an MBT – where Cumbria’s black bin waste, or everything we throw in the bin, is sent.
If you’re anything like us, you might have believed that all our black bin waste just goes straight to landfill.
But actually, landfill is mostly a thing of the past in Cumbria.
Before 1990, there were around 74 council-owned landfills across the county. Now, only three remain, the rest were restored and are now carefully monitored.
Julian Diaper, waste contract manager at Westmorland and Furness Council, manages the legacy of the landfills.
He said: “Since 1990, those landfills have been fully sanitised, sealed and we have better technology options now.
“Part of what I do involves managing the legacy of these former landfill sites.
“We don’t fully know what was going into them, so we can restore them to a point where you don’t notice them, and they just look like fields, but all we can do is manage them over the years.
“But the change to where we are now since then has been a rapid evolution.”
The MBT facility is visibly less active than the MRF where recycling is flying around on conveyor belts in all directions.
Nick Blake, contract manager for Biffa, said: “The world of waste has changed rapidly since 1990. Everything was landfilled at the time, the same as the rest of the UK.
“But now, it’s about diverting away from landfill with our MBTs.
“Since 2015, we’ve made it so 99 per cent of black bin waste is diverted from landfill, only the dust from the air of the MBT is actually landfilled from our sites.
“But it is critical that people recycle. We should be the last point of call; we should be diverting as much waste as we can.”
I start out my tour of the MBT at the control room above the facility and I’m joined by site manager Darren Bird.
I’m surprised to learn there’s only a very small handful of people who work to monitor this facility.
Most of the work is computerised and a lot of the monitoring revolves around keeping an eye on temperature levels.
Nick tells me to think of the MBT like a giant tumble dryer – with an overall aim of drying down our black bin waste into materials including:
- Solid recovered fuel, made of paper, plastic, card and textiles – which is sent away to be used as fuel in UK cement kilns
- Organic fines – which is processed and used as soil in reclamation and restoration projects
- Glass and stone – which is processed for use as a secondary aggregate
- Metals (ferrous and non-ferrous) – which are recycled
Only the extracted dust from the MBT is landfilled – which makes up less than one per cent of all the materials the MBT creates.
Because an MBT is all about drying down and shredding the material, the centre is almost on a permanent fire watch.
While they say fire incidents don’t happen often, today, the centre had a small event at 4am, which Darren tells me was likely the result of a rogue battery.
Nick said: “One of the biggest problems the industry is facing at the moment is from batteries and vapes.
“If you’ve seen the stories of collection vehicles catching fire, that’s all from lithium ion batteries that have a stored charge element in them.
“Vapes and batteries should go to designated collection points like HWRCs and supermarkets.
“Once they’re ignited, you actually can’t put them out. It’s like when cars catch on fire, the fire brigade have to leave them to burn out, it’s the same thing.
“They also release poisonous gasses and it’s getting worse year on year.”
There’s a small window in the control room that gives you a glimpse into the insides of the MBT – which I find to be slightly jaw dropping.
Inside is a vast sea of black bin waste and it’s shocking to think before 1990 it was all going straight into the ground.
Walking around the outside of the building on a high-up walkway, Darren stops to show me some of the environmental measures in place on site.
He points out a steaming biofilter, which filters and controls odour from the plant as part of strict environmental compliance measures set out by the Environment Agency.
Darren then wrenches open a window and gives me a look inside the MBT without glass in the way.
A warm air and smell of bin juice hits us in the face and I notice flies swirling around inside, which I’m told also have to be strictly controlled and monitored.
I’m told that every aspect of the waste industry is under very strict regulation from checking the waste brought onto site to the way it is stored.
It’s a lot to manage and it involves a lot of work that often goes unseen or talked about – so much so, I’m told it’s almost like a secret world of waste.
I find myself asking my tour guides if seeing this kind of thing everyday impacts the way they personally view waste and recycling.
Nick tells me: “It really does matter, and it does make a difference, and if you think about the sustainability of our lifestyle, it does make a massive difference.
“It’s an industry that naturally draws certain people into it. Everyone is passionate and an advocate of what they do in the industry.
“Yes, it is our day job, but on a personal level, it really does matter.”
Got more questions on how it all works? Don’t worry, we’ll be sharing stories on the ins and outs of how waste processing works in Cumbria everyday this week as part of our Waste Week series.
