Zero waste sent to landfill in city

As new research shows that incinerating household rubbish is the UK’s dirtiest way to make power, Milton Keynes City Council has announced it sent no waste to landfill in the last quarter thanks to its cleaner and greener gasification plant.

Milton Keynes City Council opened its Waste Recovery Park in 2017. Th e plant can process 133,000 tonnes of black bin/sack waste each year, enough to create power for 11,000 homes (nearly 10% of MK’s homes). Today, the city council uses some of that power to run its state-of-the-art fleet of electric waste trucks.

Gasification is far greener and more efficient than incinerators, which power turbines that make electricity by burning waste. In Milton Keynes, waste that can’t be recycled is boiled at high temperatures to create what’s called syngas. Unlike incineration, this doesn’t create greenhouse gases or nitrogen oxides. The Recovery Park also treats waste mechanically to extract metals and plastics for recycling and creates helpful compost through anaerobic digestion.

Ten years ago, the forward-thinking city council invested in its site at Old Wolverton to build the Waste Recovery Park as part of its commitment to sustainability. It typically diverts more than 99% of what Milton Keynes throws away from landfill, but in the last quarter, the city council reported that no waste had been sent to landfill at all.

Milton Keynes has a long history of environmentally friendly initiatives. In 1992, it became the first place in the UK to collect recycling from the kerbside. Last year, the city council rolled out red and blue recycling bins in a nod to its historic red and blue box system.

Since then, recycling rates have risen by more than a third, zooming Milton Keynes up the ranks of the cities that recycle most across England, and bucking the trend that councils in the UK are recycling less and incinerating more. In MK, around 65% of waste is currently recycled. The English average is around 44%.

New offer will make renting more affordable

Milton Keynes City Council is making it more affordable for families living in temporary accommodation to move into a private rented home.

Local need for council housing is far outstripping its availability, and the city council is currently paying for interim accommodation for more than 1,000 households who are eligible for its help. Many of these families have tried to secure private rented homes but found it unaffordable.

To help more households into settled homes, the city council launched a new off er on World Homelessness Day (10 October) where it will consider paying the difference between the rent a landlord is reasonably expecting and what a prospective tenant can afford.

As well as securing settled accommodation for more families, the city council has calculated that topping up rents will be cheaper than arranging short-term accommodation, which means the scheme will ultimately save money.

Milton Keynes City Council already offers landlords cash incentives of up to £6,680 for offering long-term rental agreements. The city council already guarantees rent for the term of a tenancy. Thanks to this and other initiatives, in the last year the city council has managed to prevent homelessness for a number of families.

Landlords who would like to learn more about what’s on offer should visit the city council’s website