Decision details

To approve recommendation by AD Streetscene for new alternate weekly collection arrangements for POPs in upholstered domestic seating, bulky items, WEEE and Small WEEE due to new legislation and recent separation of resources from Bolsover.

In September, the Environment Agency wrote to all Waste Disposal and Waste Collection Authorities regarding the emerging issue of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) found in both the textiles and foam of upholstered domestic seating.

The law requires that POPs in waste are destroyed to prevent lasting environmental harm. NEDDC’s duty of care, as a Waste Collection Authority, means that we must ensure that this waste is managed appropriately.

This affects two key services, provided by the Streetscene team:

? An on-request bulky waste collection service

? Clearance of flytipped material

Persistent organic pollutants are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the fatty tissues of humans and wildlife, and have harmful impacts on human health or on the environment. There is an international agreement, The Stockholm Convention, under which the UK has committed to manage waste containing POPs in a way that prevents these impacts from occurring.

The Environment Agency has recently undertaken an investigation and confirmed the widespread presence of very large quantities of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and other hazardous chemicals in both the textiles and foam of upholstered domestic seating. These were used as flame retardants in covers and foams.

Waste domestic seating includes any item of seating of a household type from households or businesses that is waste, for example sofas, sofa beds, armchairs, kitchen and dining room chairs, stools and foot stools, home office chairs, futons, bean bags, floor and sofa cushions. It must be assumed that any item of domestic seating waste that is upholstered contains POPs.

The law requires that POPs in waste are destroyed to prevent lasting environmental harm and impacts on the food chain. This means waste containing POPs must be incinerated and must not be re-used, recycled, or landfilled.

The EA guidance is that waste containing POPs must be segregated from waste that does not contain POPs. The EA will be undertaking assessments of compliance across the sector from September 2023. The EA have advised that “where we identify non-compliance, we will work with those responsible to bring them into compliance.”

In addition to the new changes in law the recent move to separate the strategic Alliance between NEDDC and BDC has meant that ways of working are starting to be unpicked. As a result the current Bulky and WEEE (Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment) service is to be brought back to each District.

The timing of this provides an opportunity to revise the current method of collection to benefit both customers and operational requirements. Currently, NEDDC uses a Bolsover Refuse vehicle with low level lifts to compact large items. NEDDC will be required to operate a compaction vehicle for bulky waste collection service. A second hand refuse vehicle will cost in the region of £40,000. However, the POPS items will not be compacted and these will be collected on 7.5 tonne vehicle.

Service Option 1 - attached.

The preferred option is a fortnightly collection of Bulky, WEEE and POPS items. Option 1 is demonstrably less expensive to operate but it also allows for flexibility for Breakdowns, resource issues and bad weather. Both options would require an additional staff member dedicated to operating on the Bulky, Waste and POPS service.

The majority of items on a bulky collection are from expensive purchases such as wardrobes, beds, carpets and settees. Whilst waiting for the new items to be delivered there is plenty of time to arrange for a Bulk or POPS collections. These items are not common purchases but we do have 3700 customers that use our service annually.

Customers would still be able to self-serve online and it is likely that this development work would take 12 weeks. In the interim the customers can still pay for the service but the Streetscene team would need to manually update the jobs and Customer Services will contact the customers with the dates. There is capacity to do this in the short term. Attached is a table to demonstrate resource commitment over a fortnight

Financial Considerations

There is a cost pressure as a result of bringing the service fully in-house without Bolsover along with the addition of POPS. It is proposed that for the large bulky items such as sofas, large wardrobes white goods etc (list in Appendix 1) there is a Standard fee of £15 per item introduced from 1 April 2023. This would cover the cost of the new service using a mix of compaction, non-compaction vehicles and an additional staff member.

For other standard sized items the cost to the customer would remain the same:

? 1-3 items £15
? 4-6 items £20
? 7-9 items £25

The discount for people in receipt of benefits would remain at 50% for these items.

We are also proposing to offer and additional free collection of small WEEE items along with a paid for white goods items. These collection would be for anything smaller than a microwave such as small television, hairdryers, power tools that are currently disposed of in the black bin.

Attached is a table to demonstrate the current cost of collection by other Private companies.

Whilst this service is open to all our residents we have not widely promoted it in the past. As part of the yearly Communications strategy there will be a campaign to launch the new small WEEE collection service and promote all aspects of the bulky service too.

In summary, the new charging mechanism will cover the costs for an additional Driver along with the purchase and ongoing running costs of low level compaction vehicle.

Service Option 2 attached.

The preferred option is a fortnightly collection of Bulky, WEEE and POPS items. Option 1 is demonstrably less expensive to operate but it also allows for flexibility for Breakdowns, resource issues and bad weather. Both options would require an additional staff member dedicated to operating on the Bulky, Waste and POPS service.