Brighton & Hove City Council investigate into recycling mix-up

Brighton & Hove City Council has carried out an investigation after some waste collected from the beach during Pride was not recycled.

The council reports a mix-up by some Cityclean staff, the council’s waste and recycling service, at the Hollingdean depot led to numerous bags containing tin cans being taken to the energy recovery facility in Newhaven rather than being recycled.

The cans had been collected on the beach by various volunteer groups throughout the weekend. 

It was initially thought all the recycling from the beach had been taken to the energy recovery facility, but the investigation shows it was tin cans only.

Normally any materials to be recycled are taken to the Veolia recycling facility at Hollingdean, next door to the Cityclean depot, where they are sorted into different loads for plastics.

Cityclean collected a total of 67 tonnes of waste, both recycling and rubbish, over the Pride Weekend that was all disposed of correctly.

Rachel Chasseaud, assistant director for City Environment, said: “We launched an immediate investigation into what went wrong. We can only hold our hands up and say this was a human error which should never have happened.

“We apologise to every person who volunteered their valuable time to collect the cans from the beach. These hard-working people did the right thing, unfortunately we didn’t.”