District is soon to go green as waste collections start

Riby composting facility. Picture: supplied.

As reported last month, almost 12,000 people have signed up already.

This is the first year residents are being asked to pay £35 per year, per bin.

Rob Gilliot, a waste services manager at WLDC, said: “All of the green waste produced in West Lindsey is sent for composting at one of the four local composting facilities – Sturgate, Saxilby, South Elkington and Riby.

“When the collection lorry is full, it will use the site that is closest to minimise the carbon footprint.”

The sites are private facilities but each of the companies use similar composting methods to ensure a good quality product is produced.

The garden waste is tipped by the collection vehicle on to a heap at one of our sites and turned. The material is then inspected for any contaminants.

Once they have been removed, the material is put into a pile and shredded - it is turned at least three times until it reaches its final product.

This process takes approximately six to eight weeks before quality compost is produced.

Rob visited the site at Riby and explained there was a ‘huge amount of work’ that goes into producing a good product.

He said: “The sites check the temperatures of the composting piles daily to ensure an optimum composting environment and they regularly exceed 70 degrees Celsius.

“This helps ensure that all weeds, seeds and pathogens are killed, but the sites currently can’t guarantee this and the product is not of a sufficient quality that we would be confident of supplying for use by our residents in their own gardens.

WLDC is the waste collection authority and Lincolnshire County Council are the disposal authority.

The district council collects garden waste materials from residents and deliver them to sites that are provided by Lincolnshire County Council.

The county council let contracts for the sites and they pay a ‘gate fee’ to each site in return for providing the facilities and carrying out the processing operations.

It costs the council £770,000 to run the vehicles and deliver the waste to the composting sites.

This doesn’t include disposal (which is out of West Lindsey’s control) but it includes the cost of staff, fuel, purchase and maintenance of vehicles, and a proportion of our overhead costs like our waste collection depot.