contract with Re-Gen was signed<\/a>, the company suggested it wanted to open a mainland mechanical recycling facility (MRF) but this has yet to happen.<\/p>\nCllr Hathorn (Lib Dem, Histon and Impington) said the waste partnership of local authorities, Recycling in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (RECAP), is starting to look at other solutions.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIt is not as straightforward as just building an industrial unit, putting some kit in there and switching it on \u2013 it\u2019s a long, expensive process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt requires a licence from the Environment Agency, which is not straightforward to get.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt needs to get planning permission and, as a new facility would create significant traffic in its area, there is likely to be objections to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cllr Hathorn said that the upcoming local government reorganisation \u201chas slowed down the prospects of any big project being started in the near future\u201d.<\/p>\n
The council was asked to approve a new strategy document for RECAP and Cllr Darren Green was \u201cvery encouraged\u201d to see it recommended recycling take place locally.<\/p>\n
The Green Party councillor said: \u201cI think this council must do everything it can to change this. Other counties can process their blue bin recycling locally \u2013 why can\u2019t Cambridgeshire?\u201d<\/p>\n
Cllr Mike Black (Lab, Arbury) said that \u201ceveryone can see that this looks ridiculous\u201d. He called it an example of market failure and \u201cprivatisation not working\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Labour councillor said: \u201cI don\u2019t like hearing local government review as an excuse for doing nothing or delaying things.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a new government after 15 years of the same, we have a vast need for change \u2013 and we need to change quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we should be saying that local government review stops councils from being innovative and planning for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, I think on these sorts of issues, we should be trying to get things done as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cllr Steve Tierney (Con, Wisbech West) disagreed, saying \u201cthings aren\u2019t always as simple as they appear\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Conservative councillor said: \u201cIt\u2019s not market failure when markets don\u2019t deliver the outcome you want \u2013 that\u2019s market reality \u2013 it would only be failure if they simply couldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not ideal to send things to Northern Ireland, I accept that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to see a change that changes that, but only if it\u2019s cost-effective for the taxpayer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this works out to be the cheapest way to do it for the taxpayer, then I\u2019d carry on supporting doing it \u2013 for the simple reason I don\u2019t think we need to be layering costs upon the taxpayer for virtue projects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renewed calls have been made to end a \u201cridiculous\u201d agreement to send recycling waste 400 miles away for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1190,175377,1397,229,90,24935,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-607756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-cambridge","tag-east-cambridgeshire","tag-environment","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-south-cambridgeshire","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}