Picture - Electric RCV collections in Cambridge

Waste collection recycling and treatment services have been tested to the limits in the last 18 months, from Covid impacts in terms of demands on the service, to isolation requirements, to driver shortages. And the challenges of resource management (e.g. England’s Resource and Waste Strategy (R&WS)) and net zero are bringing more fundamental changes.

The municipal waste management service comprises infrastructure, contracts and operations. The flexibility of those arrangements, and the readiness for challenges of the medium term are important for the efficient running of the services. If anything the last 18 months has shown it is almost impossible to predict which challenges will arise in practice, but there are changes we currently anticipate and contracts, services and infrastructure can be organised and structured in ways that accommodate change more readily. This can either be via contractual methods or through operational flexibility and reapportionment of services and resources, such as waste collection and recycling operations.

In terms of infrastructure and equipment there are a wide range of options in terms of new technology (to flexibly manage demand and service delivery), which will help to gain maximum efficiency savings and to help reduce internal operating costs. The utilisation of physical infrastructure (or procurement of new ones) as well as, the best choice of vehicles whether Euro 6 diesel or alternate fuelled, processing equipment or waste handling technology.

Is the current configuration of infrastructure, contracts and operations well set up for future challenges and is it suitably resilient? The service will have been tested in recent times and Operations and Contracts managers will be aware of the weaknesses. As already indicated there will be different ways of managing those weaknesses and moving to a more robust operation, or as a minimum having suitable contingency arrangements for when the service does become stressed.

We encounter numerous different approaches in our work with Councils (we have worked with around 60 local authorities on waste management services to date), ranging from reviews of services – to identify areas of weakness or risk, through to alternate outsourced or insourced services, to operational changes like effective utilisation of drivers across activities. There are many ways of structuring the operations, each with different risks and strengths, understanding the risks and managing them is key to avoid unnecessary costs in turbulent times or when the services need to evolve.

Frith Resource Management are specialists in local government environmental services, covering contracts and operations, for more information see www.frithrm.com or call 01746 552423 or email Cherie at cherie@frithrm.com