Waste Transfer Station Proposal for Bridport

Constructive Solutions

Introduction

Bridport TLC is a Community Recycling Organisation, run entirely by volunteers, whose aims and activities are to support the local community, as well as local and national government directives, to reduce waste and CO2 emissions. Our stated objectives are primarily to find Solutions to waste, whether through practical schemes such as waste oil recycling into biodiesel, which in turn runs our Small Business Recycling Collection vehicles, or through education and information such as our ‘Recycle for Dorset’ schools show for D.C.C last year or our WRAP-funded ‘Behavioural Change’ campaign with W.D.D.C in 2007 which used street theatre and community workshops to encourage commitments from residents to recycle more. This campaign led to an average increase in kerbside participation of 7% in communities where we took our road show.

Since our formation in 2006 our collective efforts have led to a diversion of over 400 tons of waste from landfill and into re-use or recycling streams, while also, through biodiesel production, reducing CO2 by over 100 tons.

We work with larger organisations to ensure that materials we collect and sort are repaired, re-used or recycled as locally and as sustainably as possible.

Our project provides, although not exclusively, opportunities for many of those who feel detached from mainstream society because of Mental Health, Drug Addiction, Housing, Probationary or Isolation issues to be worthwhile contributors to society while going through rehabilitation and healing. We provide a welcoming, supportive and friendly environment without judgement and offer expenses and lunch to all of our volunteers, without whom our efforts cannot happen.

We depend on membership fees, donations and small grants to cover our running costs and, while voluntary in our delivery, provide a professional and flexible structure to enable residents, businesses and organisations to reduce their waste.

We are the present Environmental Community Champions for WDDC.

Bridport TLC Starting Point

Bridport TLC was formed due to the frustrations of local waste and recycling facilities. We have been keen and reasoned advocates towards the building of a WTS and adequate HRC for the town and neighbouring villages. We want to fully support any viable proposition for the provision of these facilities with utmost urgency, goodwill and energy.

Most of our members were early advocates of locating it at Stoney Head or Broomhills. However, since it has been made clear that there is no way past the Highways Agency’s veto of all potential sites on the A35, and on the premise that all other options have been fully exhausted leaving Gore Cross as the only recommended site, we have some observations and suggestions to make which we hope you might consider. We believe that solutions can, and must, be found to ensure that a Gore Cross Site provides peace of mind for the local community and the local environment while also focusing on the reduction of both waste and CO2.

Solutions

Additional traffic along St. Andrews Road will understandably be the main focus of opposition to the development of the Gore Cross site.

It is our understanding that DCC predict 100,000 vehicle movements per year in relation to the site. If the site is open 360 days a year, for 9 hours a day then this amounts to, on average, 270 vehicle movements per day or 30 per hour or 1 every 2 minutes. We believe that DCC could make provisions in the Planning stages of this development to massively reduce this number from the outset.

• A local service provider should be contracted to make affordable collections from resident’s homes to collect garden waste, heavy household items such as appliances and furniture. This should reduce vehicle use by at least 20% and probably by a lot more.
• A guarantee that the larger transfer vehicles will not operate during school starting and ending times. An embargo on these vehicle movements could operate between 8am-9am and 3pm-4pm.
• A free or heavily subsidised school bus could be provided to and from Bridport Town Centre and Colfox School. A large number of cars are used to take pupils from the towns’ residential areas because the school is viewed, understandably, as being out-of-town.
• Parents who do use their own vehicles must be encouraged to combine any required visit to HRC with dropping off/picking up their children. · Vehicle sharing must be encouraged and incentivised particularly amongst parents.
• It is important to highlight that a certain percentage of vehicle movements will not affect St. Andrews Road as they will be coming from Beaminster and all of the villages to the north of Bridport.
• Buy land at Travis Perkins and provide parking for the 50-ish vehicles that currently park on various sides of St. Andrews Road. During the day this could be a (free?) ‘Park & Walk’ facility. This allows the road to be made into a Red Route while also enabling adequate traffic calming measures to be introduced: A permanent Speed Camera and an additional pelican crossing. Traffic could then flow while remaining safe to local residents, school children and people using the shops and services along that road.
• Travis Perkins are obviously prepared to sell the land to LIDL, which, if permitted, would massively increase vehicle movements on St. Andrews Road, so why can’t DCC make an offer for a far more suitable use of the land? We believe that the need for a WTS massively outweighs the so-called ‘need’ for another vehicle-dependent supermarket. This could be done by enforcing Planning Gain and would be seen to offer local residents a compromise and a community facility.
  

We fully understand that modern WTS’s and HRC’s are clean and efficient. In the planning stages we believe the following to be essential:

• That the building must be assimilated into the landscape through additional tree and hedge planting to encourage wildlife. A previous application for a site on Burton Road incorporated a turfed roof, which is what we would also like to see in this application. · The present economical and environmental climate dictates that the plans must be bold and innovative. We would like to see some, if not all, of the energy needed to run the site to be provided from waste and sustainable sources.
• Encouraging a percentage of biodiesel (from local waste oil) in local collection vehicles would further reduce CO2.
• Business waste should be re-used locally where possible e.g builders rubble should be used by D.C.C as aggregate, wood should be chipped to fuel biomass heating at the site.
• There needs to be opportunities for local schools and groups to visit the site for educational purposes about local waste, if the population of Bridport is to feel ‘ownership’ of it over the years.
• In Bridport you have a vibrant population, which is already tuned in to the need to reduce, re-use and recycle. This provides a base to seriously aim for something closer to a zero waste philosophy and the HRC element of the site should be designed to enable this. Make Gore Cross a flagship site that the local population can be proud of and support. Change is essential.
  

Leon Edwards & Charlie Fuge

On behalf of ‘Bridport TLC’

February 2009

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