Readers may have seen the report we ran yesterday about proposed expenditure by the Isle of Wight council in relation to waste contract procurement.
We got in touch with the council this morning asking whether they had considered using Waste Improvement Network (as suggested by VC), but at time of publishing had not received a response. Ed
Independent councillor, Vanessa Churchman, left a comment on the article which we felt was worthy of its own article (see below).
There is an organisation called Improvement & Efficiency Southeast who have an offshoot for waste, called Waste Improvement Network (WIN).
It has been set up as a not-for-profit section and so far 141 Councils are using its framework to procure their Waste Disposal strategies.
It is completely legal and is compliant with all the necessary European Directives with regard to waste disposal.
Avoiding huge cost of procurement
The whole idea is to provide a service which each Council can tailor to fit its own requirements without the enormous cost of procurement.
Colleagues and friends on the mainland are greatly surprised that the Island wishes to reinvent the wheel.
Ten year contract more sensible
This Council is talking about a 25 year contract (another PFI) in an age where technology is moving so fast that I suspect in five years time, we will not recognise either waste disposal or packaging as we know it today.
After making enquiries the consensus seems to be that a ten year contract is quite long enough.
Packaging changing
If you look at many European goods that come into this country the packaging is nearly always bio-degradable and I am sure that gradually, the supermarkets/manufacturers here will follow suit.
I have now raised this at the last two Full Council meetings and find it incomprehensible that having just revised our waste disposal, at some expense, that we appear to be starting from scratch.
At what cost?
We are cutting our Youth Service, apparently we can’t afford to maintain football pitches (Salters Road Rec), we have told the boxing club in Ryde to move, given the Judo Club notice to quit, cut Social Services and yet we can waste (like the pun) £900,000 on procuring a contract when there is a perfectly adequate system for us to make use of.
We are one of the smallest Councils in the country but we act as though we have a population of 1,400,000 not 140,000.
