Plastic recycling problems leave Chorley tip user frustrated

Trained ecologist Jo Woodhouse visited Chorley household waste recycling centre, Coppull Road, to dispose of a hard plastic shed.

Restrictions have now been eased at Lancashire County Council's tips, allowing visitors to drive there without having to first book an appointment, as was the previous procedure due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Other restrictions introduced when the sites reopened will continue to apply.

These include only bringing one type of waste per visit.

Visitors cannot walk freely around the site as they have been reconfigured to ensure social distancing and people are asked to drive up to the particular skip they need.

Jo, of Mawdesley, who used the tip yesterday morning, explained that the visit was with some hard plastic and plastic bags.

Jo said: "When I got to the site it was very well organised and one of the guys there was checking what sort of waste you had brought as you queued up in your car.

"When I told him about my plastic I was told they weren’t recycling hard plastic just now as people who had mixed waste materials were just throwing everything into the plastic waste crate.

"You probably know that at the moment it is advised to only take one type of waste at each visit.

"But those who have several kinds are annoyed they can’t take it to the other crates, so they throw it all into the plastic recycling.

"For this reason, I was told, they have stopped having a recycling crate for hard plastic at this site.

"I was gutted that my broken plastic shed was now going to landfill. - we must do better than this with plastic waste.

"To me this response by Lancashire, in removing the hard plastic recycling crate, is allowing those selfish, stressed, uncaring, unaware people to dictate what happens to our environment.

I understand it may be difficult to manage this problem on the site, but I think that it is a mistake to remove the plastic recycling facility as we all know the terrible consequences of plastic for both land and water natural systems .

"My shed will degrade and eventually become micro particles which will end up polluting the ecosystems and getting into the food chain.

"Whilst at the site, it seemed to me that they could’ve put a non-recyclable waste crate next to the hard plastic one, giving people a place to throw their mixed waste, so keeping the plastic bin for plastic alone.

"People are only behaving in this way out of frustration, stress and a lack of awareness of the impact.

"But we shouldn’t be putting plastic into landfill just for want of a simple solution.

"I’m sure the guys in the site could sort this out; there seemed to me to be a lack of imagination , or perhaps desire, to find a way to solve this problem.

"Having said that, the site is well-organised, so I can’t accept that they have to just send all the plastic to landfill -.this is an appalling decision on the part of the management of the recycling centre or whoever has made it."

Jo, who works as a play therapist, continued: "At home, gutted that my shed was going to landfill, I did ring the Lancashire recycling phone line and told them about this problem, and my impression was that my take on this problem was not most people’s - have to say this is common with me, most of the calls they get were from angry people who wanted to be able to take all their waste in one visit and walk round the site. It’s impossible to do this for safety reasons just now.

"All this said, I thought Lancashire was committed to looking out for the environment and stopping putting plastic into landfill is a major aspect.

"I would add that despite it saying on the website that plastic bags are recycled at this site, when I asked, I was told ‘oh, we don’t do anything with the bags, we just send them to landfill’. This is jaw-dropping stuff."

Jo has written to to county councillor Keith Iddon "to ask him to raise this issue and find a better solution".

Steve Scott, Lancashire County Council's head of service for waste management, said: "We've had to organise our Household Waste Recycling Centres differently to keep queueing traffic to a minimum and ensure social distancing measures are in place. Everyone has to park in a bay next to the container they use.

"This means we've had to remove the hard plastic recycling skips at some of the smaller sites like Chorley as they are used far less frequently than the other containers.

"The hard plastic skips are still in place at the larger centres where we have more space.

"We are reviewing the situation all the time and will look to reintroduce hard plastic recycling at all our sites once usage of the centres reduces after the summer.