Making light work of weekly rubbish

4:33pm Wednesday 4th June 2008

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THE Bin Doctor is picking over the remains of a week in the Lloyd household. It is not a pleasant task. She dons a white protective coat and pulls on the gloves.

There's a mush of strawberries that no one got round to eating. There is a sogginess of used tissues, a crinkle of empty crisp packets and a regular clink of wine bottles - relaxation at the end of a hard day accumulating so much waste.

Phillippa Scrafton, the bin doctor, quickly sorts it into recyclable piles. Cardboard and glass need no explanation. Paper is pretty simple too. "Pull the windows out of your envelopes, though," says Phillippa, waste minimisation and recycling officer for Darlington Borough Council.

"Windows contaminate the pulping stage and you end up with poor quality paper."

The mush of strawberries is easily removed as well, along with potato peelings and banana skins into the compost bin at the bottom of the garden. "Seven thousand of the 47,000 properties in Darlington have a composter," says Phillippa.

Darlington, like most councils, offers at least £10 discount for compost bins, which start at £17.

But, there is an art to composting.

"People find it's either too wet or too dry," she says.

"You have to layer it right - you can't put too much grass in. Orange peelings are a nono, and perennial weeds like dandelions thrive in there."

Her gloved hands move towards the pile of juice cartons. Morning has not broken in the Lloyd household without a large quantity of orange juice being consumed from Tetrapaks. Darlington started recycling Tetrapaks just before Christmas.

"We're already collecting four tons of them a month," says Phillippa.

"We only collect in five locations - something we're looking to improve from April next year, but we're filling ten eurobins a week with them."

A eurobin is a bin which is standard across Europe. It holds 500kg or 1,100 litres of waste. "Whichever way you look at it, that's a lot of Tetrapaks," she says.

She moves onto tins.

Sturdy drinks cans and bean cans can go out for the doorto- door collection, but the flimsy tinfoil takeaway cartons and milk bottle tops need to be taken to the recycling centre.

"The polymers that make this one pliable," she says, crushing a Chinese takeaway carton in her glove, "are different from the ones that make the drinks can rigid."

She turns to the large pile of plastic: squash bottles, milk bottles, yoghurt pots, fruit containers, meat containers.

Rather like an antiques dealer squinting for a hallmark, she turns each piece over searching for the recycling mark.

The mark is a triangle of three chasing arrows with a number inside.

Clear bottles will have the number 1, plus the letters PET to show the bottle is made from polyethylene terephthalate.

In Darlington, the door-todoor collectors will take these away, and opaque or coloured plastics, which have the numbers 2 to 5 in their triangle, can be taken to the tip for recycling.

The Bin Doctor bridles. "I can't stand that word tip'," she says. "It drives me up the wall.

"It's always been known affectionately as the tip', and people's attitude was take your rubbish up to the tip' so it could be thrown into landfill."

Darlington's dump, in Whessoe Road, has been refurbished and renamed the Household Waste Recycling Centre. In 21st Century Britain, waste is not something to be dumped or tipped; waste should now be reduced, reused or recycled.

At the old dump, 22 per cent of the 18,000 tons of waste that was dumped there every year, was recycled. At the new centre, 69 per cent is recycled.

That is 40 tonnes of cardboard and 300 tonnes of garden waste a month.

Recyclers are even able to take away free compost in return.

"Recycling is a culture change," says Phillippa. "It should become something that you do throughout the day. We need to change the idea of it being hard work.

There is no physical difference putting a bottle in a recycling box or putting it in a dustbin. The process is exactly the same: you will not expend any more effort or energy."

Of course, not everyone has room in their house for recycling boxes. Phillippa is advising builders about designing small kitchens with recycling facilities fitted as standard. She's also working to reduce waste generated.

The town's covered market is becoming bag-free.

"We need to tell supermarkets there is no need to wrap an orange, place it in a cardboard tray and then cover it in cellophane," she says. "It has it's own wrapper. It is an orange.

"They put stickers on bananas saying they are bananas. We know they are bananas."

Five years ago, the borough of Darlington recycled 12.5 per cent of its waste. Now it is 25 per cent - about the regional average.

But 65 per cent of domestic waste can be recycled.

A week's landfill from the Lloyd family once filled two 50-litre binbags and a little more besides. With the Bin Doctor's help, it is down to about two-thirds of one 50- litre bag.

The gloved hand swoops back inside the bag, through the unsavoury food waste. It disdainfully pulls out a wrapper that once contained garlic bread. Send this back to the supermarket whence it came, says the Bin Doctor (most supermarkets recycle plastic bags).

The bag is becoming emptier by the second.