Help shape the future - 5th Oct 2010

Help shape the future - 5th Oct 2010“With landfill costs already high and set to increase further over the coming years, we need to look at ways to reduce and manage waste in Merseyside”.

That’s the message from the Merseyside and Halton Waste Partnership as it announces the launch of a major public consultation across the region.

With a collective recycling rate of 33%, Merseyside has made significant improvements in its recycling performance in the last few years. However, more needs to be done. The cost of disposal to landfill is increasing and officials are committed to ensure the region continues to improve all aspects of waste management in the face of changing and new legislation and an ever-present need to divert more and more waste away from landfill.

Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (MWDA) in partnership with the five local authorities – Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton, and Wirral Council - is conducting a review of the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for Merseyside (JMWMS) to identify the best ways forward in delivering sustainable waste management for residents over the next twenty years.

The Partnership is responsible for the total management of waste, which equates to 767,000 tonnes, generated each year by 1.6 million Merseyside residents. MWDA also manages 14 Household Waste Recycling Centres across the region, four waste transfer stations and the Materials Recovery Facility at Bidston, with individual districts responsible for collection from households and local bring sites.

The Strategy was first published in 2005 and set out the guiding principles for the delivery of sustainable waste management on Merseyside over the period 2008-2020. This was updated in 2008 bringing it into line with changes in legislation, policy and performance but kept the original aims and objectives. There was a commitment in the original Strategy to review the document after five years and that is what the Partnership is now doing.

A review of the Waste Strategy for England is due to be published next year by the coalition government and the Partnership is keen to ensure that the JMWMS is robust enough to meet the new challenges it faces over the coming years. Carl Beer, Director of Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority, explains:

“We need to ensure that we maximise the use of our natural resources we produce as a society The types of waste being produced and the way in which waste is managed and controlled is changing rapidly. We know that landfill costs will continue to rise so we need to ensure we continue to work towards diverting as much as we can from landfills because we also know that budgets are likely to shrink too. It’s vital that our plans for waste management in Merseyside are appropriate to the challenges ahead but provide waste management services of a high quality that offer good value for money and take account of the environmental, economic and social benefits of waste management activities.”

The Partnership has pledged to engage with residents on the development of the Strategy and recently announced that it is to launch a major public consultation during the autumn. Carl Beer continues:

“The Partnership is committed to ensure that the services it provides meets the needs of the people it serves and to do this we will be consulting from a diverse and broad cross section of the community as possible so we can seek to understand their concerns, listen to their ideas and discuss the options with them. We need to ensure that the revised Strategy reflects the views and aspirations of the wider community. The ethos of the consultation is simple - to make sure people living in Merseyside really ‘Don’t Waste Their Say’!”

The Don’t Waste Your Say consultation will provide a variety of ways residents can get involved.

The consultation starts with an element of widespread direct face to face engagement with a representative sample of 3,000 residents from across the five districts of Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral and is planned to start on Tuesday 12 October for four weeks. Interviewers who will be calling at homes will have identification badges and letters of authority from MWDA. Officials, including Merseyside Police , will be notified of the activity.

During later October and early November, residents will have the opportunity to visit one of the planned ‘Don’t Waste Your Say’ roadshows and ask roadshow staff questions and find out more about the process. The Roadshows, which will be open from 10am to 5pm, will be at:

- St Helens, Church Square (WA10 1BN) – Monday 25 October
- Sefton, Chapel Street, Southport (PR8 1AF) – Thursday 28 October
- Knowsley, Derby Road, Huyton Town (L36 5RT) – Friday 29 October
- Liverpool, Williamson Square (L1 1EL) – Tuesday 2 November
- Wirral, Liscard Way (Liscard Village/Lloyds TSB end) (CH44 5TL) – Thursday 4 November

After completion of the face to face survey and roadshows, the public consultation moves on to engage with the community and explore key issues in greater detail through:

- Focus Groups
- Econsultation – an online research community

Focus group, each lasting for an hour and half, will consider a number of topics in detail including:

- Identifying barriers for respondents to actively do more in terms of waste management performance including waste prevention and recycling
- Exploring the role of the government, the community, the individual and the private sector (manufacturing, retail and service industries in particular) in reducing and managing their waste

The final element of the consultation is the online research community that will run for six weeks. Participants will be given an individual login to access the site where they can fill in various online surveys, post their views on the message boards, vote in Quick Polls, access articles and take part in online focus groups. Participants will be given reward points commensurate with their level of active input into the site and these points will be converted into High Street vouchers at the end of the consultation process.

Each week, the website will focus on a different theme such as key environmental concerns, food waste, shopping, reduction, reuse, recovery and waste management in the community.

“By talking to people about a range of environmental and waste issues, we will be able to identify the key topics to discuss and debate in more depth with residents as the consultations continues” explains Carl Beer. “We all produce waste and how it’s dealt with affects everybody so it’s vital that we include residents in the process of thinking about how we can move forward together”

The consultation will run from October through to December.

www.dontwasteyoursay.org

Ends