Marisa Heath chairs the Surrey Environment Partnership which covers the waste and recycling issues across the County. All of the eleven district and borough authorities who collect waste fall within the partnership alongside Surrey County Council. Marisa’s focus as chair has been to increase recycling and drive down waste general in Surrey.
The latest reporting shows that Surrey has been performing well when it comes to recycling. It is the 3rd highest of 29 comparable local authorities in England with a recycling rate of 54.4%. Most of the county’s waste, at 89.7%, stays in the country to be treated.
One of the biggest issues is contamination of recycling and so Marisa alongside the partners have been working through the SEP to tackle this. The amount of material rejected for recycling owing to contamination fell by 72.1% (624 tonnes) compared to the previous year.
You can see the new report, Recycling in Surrey 2021-22, that analyses the latest figures and compiles data from the 11 district and borough councils.
Recent analysis showed how much of these materials are not being recycled in Surrey:
- 9,096 tonnes of paper and card, equating to roughly 5,000 cars.
- 8,353 tonnes of plastic, equal to almost 1,500 elephants.
- 6,619 tonnes of glass, approximately 9,500 cows.
- 2,268 tonnes of metal, equivalent to around 4,500 polar bears.
As a result a campaign has been launched to utilise a range of tactics and channels to encourage residents to recycle more to help protect the environment.
Marisa said:
“With this new campaign, we want to highlight to residents the value of recycling as much as possible. The Recycling in Surrey report shows that Surrey is performing well when it comes to recycling but we know that lots of material that can be recycled is going into rubbish bins and we want to change that. I am hopeful that Surrey residents will be encouraged by the findings of the report and will start filling their recycling bins to help us achieve ever greater performance.”
The campaign and report kick off a year of activity for SEP with projects including:
- Introducing new food waste collection services at flats and carrying out trials to help improve use of existing services.
- A countywide rollout of a waste reduction incentive scheme, Rethink Waste, which was successfully trialled in one borough in 2022-23.
- Delivering communications to households to encourage regular use of food waste collection services.
- The rollout of various measures to reduce instances of communal recycling loads being rejected for recycling due to contamination.
- Own Your Impact, a year-long resident-facing communications campaign.
Marisa will continue to work to get even better results next year for Surrey.
