Service Waste and Recycling

The Service has 3 designated workshops to carry out vehicle maintenance and repairs. All these workshops have recycling facilities for the segregation of waste, including paper, plastic, aluminium, glass, contaminated waste, vehicle batteries and scrap metal. This ensures the safe transfer and disposal of all contaminated and hazardous waste such as engine oil, used oil filters and absorbent waste.

All scrap metal produced in our workshops is recycled through a formal contract arrangement. The Service’s main workshop at Earlswood is included in the external Green Dragon re-assessment Audit which is undertaken annually.

Statistics for workshop waste vary year on year due to the frequency of the collection and servicing schedule.

Variable servicing over the 2 financial years would result in a higher quantity of waste being produced by the workshops.

Waste from workshops is managed centrally and where possible, has been streamlined. A sole Contractor is set up to manage the collection and disposal of the majority of hazardous waste making it easier to monitor.

The arrangements the workshops now have in place are:

• Ramco – for disposal of textiles, redundant operational and miscellaneous equipment.
• Merthyr Motor Auction – for disposal of end-of-life vehicles.
• LAS recycling – for disposal of all scrap metals.

As a large organisation, we produce a lot of general and dry mixed recycling waste, as such, waste monitoring is vital so we can improve our facilities and help divert as much waste as possible from landfill.

1^st April 2020, the Service moved to a single waste Contractor to cover all our stations, which replaced 6 Local Authority contracts and a contract with Biffa for the Earlswood site. This enables us to monitor waste and compliance more easily and obtain more accurate data on waste produced at our sites.

All waste collected has increased on the baseline year as there was minimal attendance on all Service premises due to Lockdown. 2020/2021 is not a true reflection on the annual waste produced. Moving forward, we will use 2021/2022 as the new baseline year.

Dry mixed recycling and general waste is now collected from all stations and food waste collections have been established where appropriate. The Service works to only 1% of all waste collected from Service locations ending up in landfill.

Currently the range of materials that are recycled depends on the waste streams on that fire station, but generally this consists of:

• White paper
• Cardboard
• Plastic
• Aluminium
• Batteries
• Confidential waste
• Metals
• Food
• Books, journals and pamphlets
• Waste Electrical & electronic equipment
• Oils & soiled absorbent materials
• Toners & cartridges

Our confidential waste sits outside the waste collection service provider. Confidential waste is collected by a third sector organisation called Elite which provides employment for disadvantaged individuals.

As a Service, we try to reduce the amount of single use plastic which is purchased and disposed of.

A number of locations, such as Service Headquarters Carmarthen, have vastly reduced their plastic use by adopting alternatives to plastic food packaging such as biodegradable food packaging and drinking cups instead of the single use plastic products. With local Councils and Environmental Forums pushing the reduction in single use plastic, this is the first step in reducing our impact.

Historically we have used a vast number of single use plastic bottles for both welfare during incidents and everyday activities, with the number of bottles being purchased increasing year on year for the last 5 years. This could be down to a number of factors such as staff culture, lack of monitoring and ease of access to bottles of water at Service locations.

In 2020, all members of Staff were issued with individual Service re-useable water bottles. This covered both operational and non-operational Staff, with the aim of replacing single use plastic bottles of water. Feedback was positive and the change was welcomed by all.

This initiative was eagerly and successfully adopted firstly within the Earlswood Training Department for all new recruit and training courses and over the following few months throughout the Service. This was a huge step for the Service in reducing plastic waste and we have successfully halved the number of single use plastic (SUP) bottles purchased since the baseline year of 2019.

The SUP bottles of water the Service purchase are 100% recyclable but long term we aim to eliminate plastic products and packaging as much as possible. When purchasing items to come into the Service, consideration will be given to packaging for delivery and alternatives.