Recycling in Douglas: An Overview by Falk Horning, Episode 1

Written by Isle of Man Green Party Secretary and Douglas Borough Councillor, Falk Horning, Ep 1

The recycling rate in Douglas is far lower than in most towns in the UK and in Western Europe. In Douglas the kerbside recycling rate of household waste is ~7%. If the Eastern Civic amenity site is included, Douglas' recycling rate is ~18.5%

Compare this to some countries close by:

Isle of Man 18.5%
England 45%
Northern Ireland 46%
Wales 57%
Guernsey 60%

Recycling Rates have gone up in England and Wales

What has been done so far?

http://www.recyclenow.im/ is the website for recycling in Douglas. There the current system is explained, including where the materials go – the misinformation about burning recycling collections is unfortunately very persistent. The website also contains self service options including ordering of recycling boxes and reporting missed collections.

Education: The recycling service centre offers tours. Schools in Douglas are visted by recycling officers. At public events like the food festival, Tynwald Day and Nobles Park Fun Day, the recycling team regularly has a stall, engaging and educating people with games and information. Councillor Andrew Bentley and I have helped our team at those events. Representatives from waste services, Councillor Natalie Byron and I have knocked on the doors of people who don't recycle, told them about our service and offered them recycling boxes.

Newspaper press releases and social media posts from Douglas Borough Council mentioned the current recycling system and its benefits countless times.

Education is a very welcome approach, but despite this, unfortunately our recycling rate has stagnated for many years. While Douglas Borough Council is absolutely determined to continue with educating, it is very expensive, not producing results in the needed scale and there are financial limits to further continue the program.

Planning applications: Developers often try to minimise areas for waste storage in their planning applications. The result of this is that recycling is made much more inconvenient for the people who are going to live there. Douglas Borough Council; following initiatives by Councillor Andrew Bentley and I, have created guidelines for architects and pointed out waste storage problems on planning applications.

Recycling for flats: One of my first initiatives as a councillor was a push for a recycling system for flats. Douglas Borough Council has offered this for a few years now. The recycling containers can either be the usual box size; the size of a normal black bin or big four wheeled bins. The waste services officer visits the site beforehand to determine which containers suit best, factoring in how many people live in the building(s), how big the waste storage area is and how accessible the bins are for transport.

The block I live in has four bins for recycling now: glass, paper, plastic bottles/cans and cardboard. Many of the people living inter flats of neighbouring buildings use our recycling bins. The management companies of their buildings have not applied for recycling bins, so those people are inconvenienced by having to move further to do the right thing.

The next episode (Episode 2) will shine a light on:

what is being done elsewhere
which limits exist to do the same in Douglas