Somerset residents are being urged to avoid "contaminating" their kerbside waste with gas canisters and batteries.

Somerset Council and its contractor Suez collect thousands of tonnes of waste from Somerset households every year – with more and more of this waste being able to be recycled locally.

Large quantities of recycling are processed at the Taunton materials recycling facility (MRF), with cardboard from home deliveries being baled up and shipped off to be turned into new packaging for UK businesses.

But Suez still finds gas canisters and batteries being left among regular household waste – which has to be fished out by hand by staff to prevent fires within Somerset's waste facilities.

Philip de Wavrin, senior production manager at Suez. CREDIT: Daniel Mumby.

Philip de Wavrin, senior production manager at Suez, spoke on the subject when the Local Democracy Reporting Service was given a guided tour of the Taunton MRF, located at the Walford Cross industrial estate near the Monkton Heathfield urban extension.

The Taunton MRF handles around 100 vehicles every day, with waste being tracked from the moment it leaves the kerbside through every process until it is transported off-site.

The facility and its sister site in Evercreech, near Shepton Mallet, process more than 70,000 tonnes of recycling in an average year – the equivalent weight of around 5,000 double decker buses.

Mr de Wavrin said: "There is quite a lot of food waste being collected, and we're continually trying to encourage people to separate food waste from the general bin waste.

"There's about 21 per cent we could probably still recover from our general bin waste. Recovering it is great for the environment, because it's now being used for energy and in agriculture – so we really want to encourage people to separate their food waste."

Upon entering the MRF, waste collection trucks will be weighed and have their food waste compartments removed and emptied via forklift trucks.

They will then move to a series of parking bays where glass, paper and cardboard are emptied and kept separate, before cans and plastics are deposited together.

Unprocessed cardboard at the Taunton materials recycling facility. CREDIT: Daniel Mumby.

The Taunton MRF (which handles the largest volume of Somerset's recycling) has seen a sharp increase in the amount of cardboard it processes, reflecting the rise in online shopping and home deliveries since the coronavirus pandemic.

Once the cardboard has been separated, it is compressed and baled, allowing it to be transported compactly to mills across the UK to be turned into new packaging.

Mr de Wavrin said: "The delivery process is now the norm – everyone gets things online. It's not a bad thing, though, because cardboard is very good for recycling.

"We bale the cardboard with needles and wires – it's basically like threading a needing and doing a bit of embroidery with steel. The bales are much easier to manipulate. We can move the bales where we need to, store them and then it's very easy to load them when the time comes.

"It also massively reduces the carbon footprint, because it reduces the number of vehicles needed to transport it."

The mixed cans and plastics are pulled up through along a conveyor belt, with the workforce removing contaminating items – including gas canisters and electrical items.

After this, the steel and aluminium cans being separated using powerful electromagnets – with the aluminium "levitating" over the plastic using eddy current units.

Mr de Wavrin joked: "It's quite mesmerising – I've stood here for 15 or 20 minutes just watching the aluminium float over the plastic."

One hundred per cent of all glass which passes through the Taunton MRF can be recycled, while the paper and cardboard which passes through is slowly creeping towards this milestone as technology improves.

By moving towards a "circular economy" (wherein everything is reused and recycled), Somerset is reducing its need to buy in expensive raw materials from outside of the UK, cutting costs for businesses and making the county a much greener place.

Mr de Wavrin said: "Somerset residents are in the top ten per cent of the country when it comes to recycling – well done guys. Keeping the economy moving in a circle helps the UK economy and the environment – it's a win-win."

Gas canisters removed from the Taunton materials recycling facility. CREDIT: Daniel Mumby.

In order to further increase the amount of material that can be successfully recycled in Somerset, Suez is urging residents to ensure their kerbside collections do not contain gas cannisers or batteries.

Mr de Wavrin said: "Contamination is a really key point – gas canisters are a big problem if they're not sorted properly. They need to go to local recycling centres – they cannot come here.

"If you just mix batteries in with everything, they cause a chemical reaction – and you can't put that out with normal fire extinguishers. People should wrap them up and put them on top of the normal recycling so they can be collected safely and put into different containers.

"At one point the Evercreech MRF had four fires in two weeks – you can imagine the disruption that caused."

The amount of recycling being processed within Somerset has risen by 5.4 per cent in the last year, with 99 per cent of all plastics collected in the county being recycled within the UK.

The total amount of waste recycled and reused locally rose by 2.5 per cent, while the amount of waste sent to landfill dropped by more than 57 per cent.

Councillor Richard Wilkins, portfolio holder for transport and waste services, said: "We're incredibly proud of these results. It's vital for us to understand exactly what happens to the recycling we collect from residents, and it's fantastic to see more of it being processed right here in Somerset.

"Publishing these figures annually helps us stay transparent and accountable, residents want to know what happens to their recycling. Seeing how much stays close to home encourages participation."

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