Waste & Recycling Policy

Responsibility:

• Responsible Staff - Emma Soper/Padraic Downes
• Policy administrator - Christine Butterfield
• Approving body - Governors
• This policy will be reviewed every three years or sooner if required

This policy is produced in an effort to achieve the following objectives:

1. Ensure a safe and healthy work environment for employees, students and visitors.
2. Protect the environment by using sound principles of handling, treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste.
3.  Minimise the generation as well as cost of handling and disposing of hazardous materials.
4. To reduce the amount of waste going into landfill or to incineration

Objectives

The College will take reasonable steps to minimise the waste it produces. Where there are materials that are no longer required the following options will be considered:

• Reduce – Avoid the need to discard materials in general.
• Re-use – Pass on equipment to others before disposing of it.
• Recycle – Segregation of materials for recycling to reduce the waste at the college.

Waste reduction

Connell Co-op College commits to make every attempt to minimise the amount of waste produced. Examples of how this might be achieved include: avoiding unnecessary photocopying, using existing materials rather than new ones, and printing on both sides of paper, keeping resources organized and tidy to avoid unnecessary breakages.

Re-use

Where possible materials will be re-used such as ‘scrap paper’ (paper printed on one side / spare worksheets) for note-taking.

Recycling

The following materials will be recycled:

• Paper products including magazines and cardboard
• Metal
• Glass

The recycling of these materials is done by Bagnall & Morris waste company who the college has specifically commissioned to handle waste removal due to its price, quality of service, its policy to sort and recycle at least 85% of all refuse collected.

Containment and Collection

The waste removed from the building shall be removed and stored in the areas in the purpose-built enclosed yard area. The yard contains five 1100 litre bins for all general waste and five 1100 litre bins for dry recyclable waste. These bins will be emptied weekly by the waste service provider Bagnall & Morris. There are also two 140 litre bins for all food waste, these bins are exchanged for clean bins once a week by contractor Re-Food.  All wood and metal waste is stored in the designated area of the yard and collection arranged as needed.

General Hazardous Waste Guidance

Definition

Hazardous Waste is defined by reference to the European Waste Catalogue (EWC). The official definition of ‘Hazardous’ has been extended to include wastes which are classified as Hazardous in the EWC but have not in the past been seen to present a risk. These include fluorescent tubes, old computers, television sets and batteries.

Batteries

The disposals of batteries containing lithium, cadmium, mercury, lead-acid type or rechargeable must be disposed of at a recognised recycling depot. www.batteryback.org/

Aerosol Cans

Aerosol cans must be treated as hazardous waste and the same procedure as the battery disposal.

Fluorescent Light Tubes

Old Fluorescent light tubes will be removed by facilities. As the tubes contain mercury they must be disposed of at a recognised recycling depot. City electrical factors.

ICT equipment

No item of college ICT or telecommunications waste equipment will be disposed of except through an agency specifically authorised and registered for such waste disposal

Data Protection

The Data Protection Act protects the use of personal data and ensures that authorised data users have a duty of care to keep it private and secure. This is particularly important in respect of electronic data held on computers and computer equipment that is to be disposed of. The college has a duty to ensure the Personalised data, confidential data or any other data coming within the remit of the Data protection Act is properly removed from the computer.

Toner ink cartridges

A central internal bin is kept in the reprographics office. The used cartridges are then collected by an external contractor with the correct waste caring licence.