Learn more about Coventry’s waste network.
This blog was written by Environment Team Student Ambassador Robyn McSharry.
Sherbourne Recycling Limited serves eight local authorities in the West Midlands. These authorities are Coventry City Council, North Warwickshire Borough Council, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Borough Rugby Council, Stratford-on-Avon District Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Walsall Council and Warwick District Council. The company was founded in 2021 to design, develop and implement an effective recycling facility that could recycle a range of materials from the eight towns listed and to provide a solution to process the council’s residential kerbside recycling collections. The Sherbourne Resource Park, or Sherbourne Recycling Centre opened and became operational in summer 2023 meaning it is still evolving.
Sherbourne’s recycling management solution is designed to be adaptable, efficient and technologically advanced compared to other Material Recycling Facilities in the UK. The facility can quickly adapt to changes in the volumes and materials it processes to manage changes in the types of municipal waste and government legislation surrounding recycling. When I think of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I think of cute, funny, and sometimes scary AI-generated pictures and people cheating to pass dissertations. However, the Sherbourne Recycling Facility uses AI to identify, sort and separate materials to reduce cross-contamination and increase the percentage of municipal waste that can be recycled.
The Sherbourne Recycling Facility is less than a year old, meaning it does not recycle all materials. Not yet anyway, which could change depending on the materials it receives, the companies buying recycled materials, and advances in the technologies used. However, as a Coventry Local, I know a common misconception is that all of Coventry’s waste goes to the London Road Incinerator. On a cold day, smoke from the incinerator can be seen from four miles away. Coventry’s Incinerator opened in 2010, using Energy from Waste to heat the Council House, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum and the Wave Waterpark.
Another misconception that I had surrounding Coventry City Council’s Waste Management Strategy was that low-value municipal solid waste, such as plastic, was exported to low and middle-income countries such as Turkey, Poland and Gambia since China, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia rightly started to reject and return it five years ago. Although there are still councils in the UK that export municipal waste to the three countries listed, Coventry City Council does not, partly due to the incinerator, which contributes to local air pollution and means Coventry currently recycles 28.6% of waste, lower than the UK average of 43.3%.
As the Sherbourne Recycling Facility develops, Coventry may become less reliant on the incinerator to manage waste, especially if it is a good source of revenue for public spending. Coventry City Council makes £18,000,000 annually from the incinerator. Cancelling it would reduce the council’s budget for other services. Reducing the amount of waste incinerated could improve public health though, as it is estimated to be linked to three air-pollution-related deaths annually, most notably in Coventry’s poorest areas such as Wood End, Foleshill and Willenhall. The incinerator may close in 2041 making the Sherbourne Recycling Centre an attractive alternative.
The Sherbourne Recycling Plant also aims to tackle pollution by using 100% renewable energy, as the entire Sherbourne Recycling Park’s roof is covered with solar cells, which are supported by another private connection to the Energy from Waste plant, and power other functions such as lighting and heating, as well as an electric forklift fleet, and new sustainable technology for the vehicles that move materials around the site, is renewable. Trucks carrying waste to the recycling centre from residential areas run on diesel which has received criticism, but biomethane (human, animal or food waste) can be used to fuel trucks.
Depending on how similar your home town’s or country’s recycling system is to the city where you study, it may or may not be obvious which materials should be recycled and which should not. This section will provide a quick, informative guide to separating waste if you live in Coventry. Items for the blue-lidded recycling bin are glass jars, aluminium foil, food and drink cans, glass bottles, newspapers and magazines, toilet roll tubes, cereal boxes, junk mail, cartons, paper and card, mixed glass, aerosols, plastic food trays, yoghurt and dessert pots, fresh fruit trays, detergent, toiletry and cleaning product bottles.
Currently, the garden waste bin collection is suspended. From the 3rd of June, the Council will charge residents £40 per household annually to collect biodegradable waste regularly. This is an unpopular policy, but other councils do it, a concern is that more biogenic waste will be incinerated when it should be reduced. Nonetheless, here is some information on what to put in the brown-lidded garden waste bin for those who can afford to use it. Appropriate items for the brown-lidded bin are grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, twigs and small branches, leaves, weeds and flowers, straw and hay and food waste.
Preventing cross-contamination is essential to ensure that things are recycled. Clean and separate your household waste and check the Coventry Recycling Club website. Things that you should avoid putting in the blue-lidded recycling bin are plastic toys, shredded paper, general rubbish, wallpaper, polystyrene nappies or tissues, broken glass including light bulbs, cookware such as pots, pans or Pyrex and pizza boxes with food waste or oil stains. Also, avoid putting animal waste, nappies, tree stumps, diseased plants, plastic bags, rubble or bricks, plastic bags, plant pots, clothes and bedding, and large amounts of soil and turf in the brown-lidded bin. For the full list of what you can and can’t recycle – check out the A – Z guide here.
For students, problems recycling household waste may vary from the uncertainty of collection times to having too much waste to recycle, having items that cannot be recycled using blue or brown-lidded bins or even the inability to dispose of waste using the green-lidded bin. The first problem can be resolved by looking at the Coventry City Council Website for waste collection times and dates. The second can be mitigated by reducing waste with the help of some of Coventry’s refill shops and markets and by reusing packaging. The third can be solved by booking collection appointments through the council website.