Climate Change and Waste Recycling

Friday the 14th was a very busy day in my calendar as I presented a 15 minute presentation on the councils position on 'Climate Change' and what our intentions for change are for the next 30 years. The audience were senior elected members and senior officers from the five West Yorkshire Authorities. The West Yorkshire Academy on Climate Change is a three part series of seminars to bring together the five authorities to share experiences and good practice and to look for ways that we can all work together to achieve our combined aims for the future.

This was part two and besides myself there were presentations from Kirklees and an officer from ARUP. Workshop sessions followed in our respective organisation groups to look at what we were all doing and what were the challengers being faced. All the groups came back with similar answers on the challengers that need to be addressed, namely:
Transport
Planning
Regeneration.

The answer was also pretty clear from all five authorities. We HAVE to work together and pool resources especially around research with each authority putting small amounts of monies into their local University on their own issues rather than pooling that money and doing more in depth research.

In the afternoon I was back in Wakefield for a project board meeting for the proposed new Household waste recycling centre. The planning application is in the system and will be heard on the 27th November and with a favourable result we will then be able to move on to the next stage and sign the agreement with VTEE and start to see the plant coming together.

I also received the latest position with our alternate weekly collection service roll out of phase four with some very good early results showing a recycling rate of 43% in the first three weeks and some 1200 tonnes of material being diverted from landfill. Thanks to everyone for their efforts and long may it continue.