Councillor Paula Widdowson, one of the Liberal Democrat members of the Local Infrastructure and Net Zero Board, writes about the importance of knowing where your council's recycling goes to.
For groups in control speak to your portfolio holder/cabinet member and for groups in opposition it is a good one to table a question on:
In York we have a policy that as many recyclates as possible are processed as close to York as possible, and that the minimum amount is processed outside Yorkshire, the UK and none outside of Europe.
There are annual and six monthly audits, reported back to the council, to ensure that this process is in place. The audits are undertaken by Yorwaste (the council's waste contractor) and verified by the council auditors. This enables councillors to state that the policy is happening in practise. The person we work with at Yorwaste is the Compliance and Commodity Manager, he has access to all the certification and audit reports.
For Yorwaste the vast majority of off takers are UK based and they conduct an on-site compliance audits as part of their process. For the smaller amounts that go to Europe Yorwaste carry out an on-site audit of the UK brokers, and back that up with a desktop audit of the onward European destination. As all off take locations are within the UK/EU they are all operating under the relevant local EA regulations. Yorwaste cannot eliminate the potential for bad actors within that process (e.g. Biffa has been caught breaking the rules in the past!) but they are confident that a robust process which balances risk and Value For Money is in place.