Question
Why has Wokingham Borough Council not eliminated the use of non-essential single use plastics from Shute End and all Council controlled environments?
Minutes:
Question
Why has Wokingham Borough Council not eliminated the use of non-essential single use plastics from Shute End and all Council controlled environments?
Answer
Wokingham Borough Council has been proactively working to eliminate the use of single-use plastics where it is not essential. From January 2020, we removed single-use coffee and water cups from our drink dispensing machines in the Shute End Council Office and Wokingham Town Centre Library. In the public areas of the building, plastic cups have been replaced by biodegradable paper cups. Our café has moved to biodegradable materials from single-use plastic packaging since December 2019. As hosts, we endeavour to reduce the amount of single-use plastic products used in meetings and use washable and reusable cups.
We recognise that a large proportion of the challenge is changing the mind-set of staff when it comes to eliminating a material we have become so reliant upon. We removed the number of bins around the offices and created waste and recycling points to encourage people to think twice about what they throw away. With the support or our Green Team, the Council launched an internal sustainability campaign in March 2020, aimed at encouraging behaviour change, to ‘encourage staff’ as far as possible to stop single-use plastic.
We seek to set an example for businesses, schools, and residents in the Borough to follow. By engaging with partners, we can achieve great impact. For example, working with one of our service providers, Cater Link, the Council has reduced the use of single-use plastics from the catering services in 34 schools across the Borough. School kitchens have benefited from no cling film pledges, removal of plastic cups, straws, bottles, crudities tubs, and the introduction of reusable plastic pots and containers and fully recyclable packaging materials. Kitchen staff are also encouraged, where possible, to reuse plastic containers from delivered goods.
Regarding our waste collection services, we use blue bags for household waste and the caddie bags for food waste, which are both polyethylene, and for single-use.
Whilst the blue bags are single-use plastic, they act to reduce residual waste and drive up recycling as we restrict them to 80 per 80 litre bags per annum and encourage residents to return unused bags to our Libraries and community hubs. The Council has now established a weekly food waste service available to all of our residents, which has resulted in a reduction of 5,000 tonnes going into general waste this year.
The Council encourages residents to use different methods, such as newspaper, bread or vegetable bags for the kitchen caddies instead of single-use plastic bags. A large majority of our residents, who are also trying to eliminate single-use plastics from their lives, support this.
Supplementary Question:
In September 2019 Gregor, you put forward a Motion to eliminate single use plastics. You put the same Motion through in January 2020. You have just said in reply to Ella’s question I think, that you will put forward the same Motion again in a future Council meeting, but at the same time you have reeled off a list of examples where you are saying that the Borough Council has eliminated the use of single use plastics. Forgive me, it does not seem like we know what we are doing. We either have or we have not eliminated it. My question is, is the role of the Executive to execute actions. If the Executive is serious about eliminating the use of single use plastics, why do we not just get on with it rather than bringing Motion after Motion to the Council?
Supplementary Answer:
It is a fair challenge Andy. I think what you can see from the actions that have been taken is that we are just getting on with it, and despite Full Council not getting around to the Motions, which is something that I have found very frustrating as I have wanted it to be debated in the Chamber and to have that discussion amongst all of the Members, we have still got on with the job of removing single use plastics from our Council business and from our controlled environment. I think you have actually made my point for me, which is that we have just gotten on with it, and I still want to put the Motion through to Council because I think it is a statement of intent to say not only are we removing them but we do not want them going forward.