On Thursday the 16th July Swansea Waste Forum opened its doors to anyone who had a burning question to ask about waste issues in Swansea. An Open Forum meeting was held at the National Waterfront Museum.
The panel of speakers was made up of
- Russell Owen - Waste Strategy Officer, Welsh Assembly Govenment
- Reena Owen - Director of Environment, City & County of Swansea
- Lindsey Perrot - Green worker, Lush Swansea
- Spencer Feeney - Editor, South Wales Evening Post
- Gareth Evans - Centre Manager, The Environment Centre
Everyone was invited to submit a question to the panel before the event. A selection of questions were selected and discussed on the 16th. Below is a selection of the questions with responses from the panel.
| Name of questionner | Question |
|---|---|
| val harris | As there has been a trial on the collection of plastic, when are they going to reinstate it and this time to the whole of Swansea. Other Councils also sell items made from recyclable items when is Swansea going to do that. |
| sarah | hate to repeat a question... but plastic is a major problem in my house, I could recycle a bag a week in just milk bottles and orange juice!!! any news on that!! |
| Robert Alexander | Amongst other items,20,000 TV's and 8000 Fridges left the Swansea area last year, do you believe that the CCS & Evening Post could do more to help groups increase reuse of those and other items within the poorest communities from where they were generated |
| Robert Alexander | Companies from England are coming to take household Weee, what is the WAG doing to help keep Welsh Weee to develop local regeneration |
| Robert Alexander | WAGs Budget for next year is looking for 200M Savings. In terms of CCS projects involving waste, does CCS know when and if a project is a loss or profit |
| Nick Howell (Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr) | Currently, there is no kerbside collection of plastics. Collections are made from schools of types 1,2,3 because there's a market for these. What happens then to all the other types of plastics that are taken to the recycling facilities? Carmarthenshire make kerbside collections of all plastics. Does Swansea have similar pl |
| Nick Howell (Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr) | The council has increased recycling in the county in response to WAG targets but doesn't generate any revenue from these efforts - why don't we close the loop by generating markets for recyclables in Swansea e.g. If all council offices, schools etc used recycled paper from an agreed supplier who in turn took all of the coun |
| Nick Howell (Ysgol Gyfun Gwyr) | Ironically, we might be missing the point just hitting recycling targets - are we thinking about a sustainable recycling market? What about using reduced commercial recycling rates to incentivise the use of recycled paper by Swansea businesses? |
| Mo Green | How can we encourage partnership working? |
| Mark Williams | What acctually happens with the paper and carboard thats collected, is it stored or sold on, do we make a profit if sold on or a loss. |
| Mark Williams | Cardboard is collected from commercial business for free by the council. Is there a same scheme fro paper. |
| Lynda James | 1. How is compostable waste disposed of , e.g. is it heat treated so that it's inert; |
| Lynda James | what they do with plastic waste and what we can do to encourage more recycling of plastic |
| Jo Parker | Plastic must be a priority for WAG to get LAs to collect. This will only change if WAG stop putting perfromance indicators on waste based on Weight. The weigt of plastic is quite small, but the damage to the environment is huge. |
| Helen Ball | What financial incentives are on offer to new business with environment ethics at their core? Such as starting an eco-fashion company, and if there aren't any do you plan any in the foreseeable future? |
| Dr. Larch Maxey | When will Swansea allow perfectly good items to be Re-used by selling them from civic amenity sites as other councils do? |
| Cara Sandys | I live Castle Buildings where the recycling facility has been removed due to contamination. How can we get this reinstated and how can we teach the residents to recycle? |
| anon | Whilst this is not necessarily a criticism aimed at the local paper I would like to ask why the media generally is not very supportive of local councils efforts to promote recycling and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. |
| Anita Houton | Where should waste education begin? At the moment it begins at school but how can we encourage this to begin at home? |
| Amina Ali - Black Environment Network | Is there any financial support available for promoting recycling awareness for ethnic minority groups, particularly as the SRS project has come to an end? |
