Items like nappies or food waste have to be disposed of alternatively, and when mixed with recycling there's an additional cost.
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00:00Tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money spent on dealing with waste gone wrong.
00:06Last November, Medway Council reported that 20% of kerbside recycling was contaminated,
00:12meaning it had to be disposed of by alternative means, with a cost of £57,000 over the previous
00:1912 months.
00:20And the problem is still ongoing. The council spent £25,000 disposing of contaminated recycling
00:27in the five months after that November council meeting. That's more than 1,000 tonnes of
00:34contaminated recycling.
00:36Recycling can become contaminated by rogue items being put in the wrong bags. Down the
00:41road in Raynham, passers-by were confident that they were recycling savvy, but were slightly
00:47taken aback by the cost of contamination.
00:50Pretty confident. You get the fun sack for the plastics and glass and things like that,
00:58and another one, a box for the paper and the card.
01:01Yeah, I've got a brown bin for garden rubble. I use the green bins and then I use the black
01:08bags.
01:09I put everything where it should go.
01:12So would it surprise you then to know that the council has spent £25,000 disposing
01:17of contaminated recycling?
01:20Really? Wow. If people did what they meant to do, you wouldn't have this problem.
01:30Some people just don't care, as long as it's not in their backyard, whatever.
01:35That's all you can do, a leaflet, I think, in their front letterbox, and say that it's
01:42costing the council money that they should be spending on something else.
01:46The Raynham Eco Hub has been helping to boost Raynham's sustainability since it started
01:51in 2020. They say this problem may not be malicious.
01:55There's a concept called wish cycling, which is where people really, really want to do
01:59the right thing. And so I think sometimes people can end up putting things in recycling,
02:04not because they're bad people and not because they're lazy or because they don't care, but
02:08because they really want to do the right thing. So some of the items that end up contaminating
02:16waste can include batteries or household recycling, food waste, nappies, textiles.
02:23And the people that are producing the items that need recycling, they need to have a bit
02:27more of a conversation with people of, you know, how to do that more effectively.
02:33A Medway Council spokesperson says that information on how different types of waste should be
02:38recycled is widely available, with guidelines printed on recycling bags and available on
02:45their website and social media channels. So next time it comes to recycling day, be
02:50careful because the contamination may be more than you think.
02:54Oliver Leaders, The Sacks, in Raynham for KMTV.