Belfast City Council

Belfast City Council takes in around 151,000 households, 10,000 businesses and a population of 339,000 people. The Council’s annual operating budget is £150M.

The Council’s Waste Management Service deals with the collection and processing of 180,000 tonnes of municipal waste annually. The City’s recycling rate reached a respectable 44% in 2015 but fell back to 41% when the city boundary moved and expanded to take in some new poorer performing areas as part of a Local Government Reform Program. The Council is developing their next strategic waste plan to target 50% recycling and beyond.

Tim Walker, Head of Waste Management, Belfast City Council, gives us more information on its activities regarding sustainable resource management.

ACR+: What are the main challenges on your territory in the field of sustainable resource management?
T.W.: Many of our challenges are very practical. Waste management in Belfast suffers the normal difficulties presented by high-density, fast-paced, congested cities. However, there are four main challenges that we are targeting:

1. There is the ongoing challenge of changing behaviours – both convincing residents of the need to reduce, reuse and recycle, and communicating how to do those things effectively. While most householders take the Council’s environmental message to heart, these aspirations are often a low priority to those residents in areas experiencing significant levels of social deprivation.
2. Over 20% of the City’s housing stock, as with many European Cities, are apartments. In 2010 we introduced design guidance for bin storage aimed at the City’s architects which has transformed the physical design of waste storage areas in new complexes. However, getting apartment occupants to actually segregate their waste is proving a much more difficult task.
3. The Council is also undergoing a major organisational restructure at the moment. As part of that, we are merging the strategic waste management functions with the operational collection of waste, which had been separated under previous UK local government governance arrangements. The new arrangement will have obvious benefits in terms of aligning priorities and effort, but we need to develop an effective structure, establish a common culture and integrate our processes – while continuing to provide a service to the public every day.
4. And finally, at a more strategic level, we are managing the Council’s transition to circular economy thinking. The Council has always regarded waste management mainly as an expensive burden (£26M annually – 17% of the council’s total revenue budget), but we are making progress in convincing the organisation of the potential economic benefits – jobs and skills – that can come about by stimulating the circular economy locally. We are now working with a select number of internal and external partners, including a number of social enterprises, to develop a framework, known as Resourceful Belfast, to formally underpin our circular economy ambitions.

On top of all of that, we are operating in the uncertain political and commercial environment that has been created by the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. The full impact and implications of that decision, for sustainable waste management in Belfast, may take some time to emerge. None the less, we are keen to learn from and contribute to lessons in best practice throughout Europe.

ACR+: What are your priorities in sustainable resource management for the current year?
T.W.: We have two strategic priorities, outlined separately in our Waste Framework and Resourceful Belfast.

The Waste Framework is our strategic waste plan. It is concerned with implementing fit-for-purpose services to increase recycling and ensure compliance with waste and recycling legislation and targets. We have lengthy scrutiny and approval processes to go through, including a public consultation, to agree and embed the way forward.

Resourceful Belfast is concerned with stimulating the circular economy to achieve economic benefits from our waste and resource management. We want to achieve approval for this initiative and implement some simple schemes to build confidence and establish credibility in our plans going forward.

At the practical level, new Food Waste Regulations have been introduced to Northern Ireland, to ensure that waste food is separately collected and treated. A recent waste characterisation study also identified that a large proportion of the city’s household food waste was not being captured for composting, making it a key target material for us. So, while we have kerbside collection systems already in place to capture food, the new legislation provides an opportunity to renew our communications and enforcement campaign. Initial responses are very encouraging but, as with everything, maintaining the momentum will be the ongoing struggle.

ACR+: Could you share with us one of your main achievements, a successful experience and action implemented in the last months and/or year?
T.W.: It has been really rewarding to see support building for our circular economy ambitions, and a recognition that we can be a significant economic contributor to the city. That process has helped those of us who are already in the Waste Management Service to look beyond the tonnage figures and recycling rates, and appreciate the fact that our existing operating model has already provided significant numbers of local people with full time employment by treating captured material within the city boundary.

One powerful example of this was the launch of our mattresses recycling initiative with USEL (Ulster Supported Employment Ltd). USEL provide training and pathways to secure employment for people with disabilities and health-related conditions.

USEL have been manufacturing mattresses for various local companies for the last 15 years. We collect around 200 tonnes of discarded mattresses (12,000 units) annually. Our only option was landfill. We worked with USEL to develop a process to deconstruct the discarded mattresses and recover the materials to provide feedstocks for other local manufacturing industries. While this has only made a small contribution to our recycling target, it has created a significant economic impact by creating ten sustainable full-time jobs for local people with disabilities.

Having proved the concept and gained widespread recognition of the circular economy in action, our eyes are on bigger things and this is just the beginning for Belfast. By testing new operating models (driven through the Waste Framework and Resourceful Belfast) we are promoting the value of waste as a resource, and demonstrating that new approaches to waste management can positively progress our own economy and environment.

To discover more about Belfast City Council you can visit www.belfastcity.gov.uk or contact Tim Walker, Head of Waste Management (in relation to fit-for-purpose organisational structure – walkert@belfastcity.gov.uk), Marcus Campbell, Project Manager (in relation to Resourceful Belfast and apartment recycling campbellm@belfastcity.gov.uk) or Eleanor McGarrity (in relation to waste contracts mcgarritye@belfastcity.gov.uk).