Refuse Collection of the Future
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Working party report debated at 69th IPC Conference REPORTED BY ASHLEY TAYLOR, AMIRTE, AssocInstT
TECHNICAL aspects of the report of the .I. working party on refuse collection were discussed at Tuesday's sessions of the 69th annual conference of the Institute of Public Cleansing at Blackpool. Mr. R. F. Millard, area engineer, GLC department of public health engineering and a member of the working party on refuse collection, said they recommended that in all but the smallest authorities continuous loading vehicles should be used for house refuse collection. Forward and rear tippers were regarded as useful for bulk containers and bulky refuse collections. No case could be made out for vehicles that were not purpose-built for refuse collection and side-loaders should no longer be purchased for this specialized work.
Statistics prepared in 1964 showed that 30 per cent of refuse vehicles in use were side-loaders but the owners indicated that they were nearly all old and were serving out their useful life. The party received from the six main body manufacturers the percentage of side-loaders being built and the few being made were either for rural or smaller urban district councils or for market and special collections. Barrier loaders and moving floors were rejected, principally because they did not meet clean loading requirements and were uneconomic compared with compression vehicles.
Much to be desired
The fore and aft and dual tip types were still popular and with continuous loaders made up the bulk of present-day purchases. In practice these two-way tippers left much to be desired in cleanliness of loading and no satisfactory safeguards had been devised to prevent spillage and dissemination of dust. With the continuing fall in the density of refuse the loads carried by them became less and less economic. Two-way tippers were suitable for the collection of bulky trade waste and furniture which were difficult to ,handle in continuous loaders.
The problems lay in the fact that bulky refuse was increasing, demanding a wide aperture for easy loading although this usually meant more spillage and dust when the same vehicle was used for normal refuse collection. It was not practicable to keep all vehicles employed fully on the collection of one type of refuse. The intermittent form of compression vehicle was not generally as satisfactory as the continuous-loading type. There appeared to be a tendency in the US, where refuse was lighter, to favour intermittent loaders, probably at the cost of clean loading.
Continuous-loading vehicles were expensive both in initial cost and maintenance but they enabled refuse collection to be carried out quite cleanly even without dustless loading and paper sacks. With capacities of 35 or 50 Cu. yd. reasonable loads could be carried, unproductive journeys to the disposal point reduced, and idle waiting time by the collectors kept to a minimum. The small 7+ Cu. yd, capable of carrying 20 cu. yd. of refuse, was particularly suitable for such situations as narrow back-lanes.
Capacity achieved
Some doubts had been expressed in the past as to whether a body rated by the manufacturers at, say, 35 cu. yd. could in fact take that quantity of refuse. A great deal depended on the nature and preloaded density but some special tests were carried out by members of the working party and in almost every case the claimed capacity was achieved and even slightly exceeded.
Continuous loaders had not always proved satisfactory on container collection, partly because of bridging in the hopper, limited hopper capacity and low height of discharge. For this type of work the twoway tipper and intermittent compression vehicle with a high container lift might score, even with a reduced body capacity.
Some three-quarters of all local authorities, said the report, collected house refuse once a week but even allowing for rural areas a surprising number collected less frequently. In most cases this was probably due to labour difficulties rather than the cost. The working party agreed that in normal circumstances a weekly collection was acceptable. All evidence pointed to either Continental dustless loading or disposable sacks providing the only really satisfactory system for refuse collection from small dwellings.
Some councils used vehicles with special salvage compartments, but this, in effect, reduced the capacity as the salvage was not compressed. The report condemned loading paper on the roof where it might blow away, or into sacks clipped to the rear of the vehicle. Trailers might increase effective capacity but at the same time slow down the emptying of the bins by restricting access to the vehicle hopper.
Speaking on legal and administrative aspects, Mr. H. H. Browne, Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and chairman of the working party on refuse collection, said that for communities of more than 100,000 people the working party considered it important that an authority should have a separate cleansing department which could give its undivided attention to the service under a high ranking officer without other responsibilities and with direct access to the appropriate committee.
Some special types of refuse were dealt with in the report in chapters of their own_ because of the particular problems associated with them. A good part of the trouble with derelict motor vehicles related to disposal. On the collection side there were cars that were abandoned, in many cases because the owners did not know of a convenient way of getting rid of them. The problem of old motor vehicles illustrated in a dramatic way the need for local authorities to provide a full refuse collection service for private people. If such services were not available other, socially undesirable, steps would be taken when members of the public wanted to get rid of things.
Requirements fulfilled
The smaller authority's angle was the subject of comment by Mr. H. F. Critchley, engineer, surveyor and health inspector, Stroud RDC, another member of the working party. Many small authorities, he said, were now purchasing rear loading vehicles with intermittent or continuous compression devices. The former type required careful loading to avoid overfilling of the hopper and spillage of refuse. Made in several sizes, the continuous design fulfilled all the basic requirements. Variations now to be seen used mechanically driven screw impellers and rotating drums. They achieved a high compression ratio and, although expensive to buy and complicated to maintain, were suitable for many smaller districts.
The very small authority using only two or three vehicles would find it uneconomic to carry a spare unit of such an expensive type and a breakdown would make the maintenance of the service very difficult. An important suggestion in the report was
that such small authorities might organize jointly with their neighbours a pool of spare vehicles and ,joint equipment and repair facilities. Alternatively, some manufacturers were prepared to make collection vehicles available on hire. In any case, small authorities purchasing large capacity continuous compression units should have adequate standby arrangements to cover breakdowns and other emergencies.
Experiences in dealing with an occupational health service in the transport and cleansing department at Bristol were described by Dr. J. W. Markham, senior Medical Officer (Occupational Health), City of Bristol, on Thursday. Chronic bronchitis formed about a quarter of all causes of absence of more than a month in the transport and cleansing department. Because of the enormous cost to the authority of this illness the committee requested that an investigation should be made into methods of preventing it. As a result arrangements were being made to analyse the dust to which refuse collection workers were exposed.
While the analysis was going on they proposed to examine the men for any connection with dust counts. It was also hoped to arrange a parallel investigation of workers not exposed to, or very much less exposed to, dust.
On the refuse vehicles they might occasionally experience a severe injury, requiring first aid followed by hospital treatment, but more frequently there would be minor scratches and cuts. For the first contingency it was recommended that a sealed first aid box should be bolted into the cab to be used only for relatively major incidents. This should contain 10 large, four medium and eight finger-size standard wound dressings, four triangular bandages and safety pins, a roll of fin. zinc oxide plaster, and scissors. For the more common minor injury it was suggested that the following should be issued to the driver and checked and replaced at intervals: 12 sealed packets each containing two sterile cotton wool buds, a tube of Savlon cream for wound cleaning, an instruction sheet, a box of wrapped assorted adhesive dressings, a roll of +-in. zinc oxide plaster and scissors.
The value of public relations in relation to public cleansing, and methods to be adopted, were described by Mr. Laurence Evans, head of the Local Government Information Office. Mr. Evans said that he had spent some five years immersed in road safety publicity and it was more than a hunch when he said if sufficient sociological studies could be made they would find that the small section of society involved in acts of vandalism might largely overlap with that committing serious driving and riding offences, other criminal acts, drug-taking and so on.
Sample researches of Dr. Terence Willett, Reader in Sociology at Reading University, showed that taking a small sample of road offenders the weak-willed were easily influenced by stronger characters and a bad road user could infect everyone else near him. Out of 653 offenders studied, 60 were known as notorious to the police. About one-third were far from being respectable citizens and about half had previous convictions of some kind. Many were found to have criminal records and histories of serious motoring offences, some were maladjusted and showed personality disturbances.
Opening the discussion on the paper by Mr. H. H. Browne, Md. W. R. Lewis (Birmingham) told delegates that in 1959 his committee had introduced the dustless loading system, recommended in the Report. They had planned to defray the cost over 10 years but it was clear that it would take a little longer.
Raising the question of salvage collection, Mr. P. B. Cartwright (Cardiff) felt the Report offered little encouragement and suggested that the Government should act as a buffer by maintaining a standard price and perhaps creating stock piles.
Md. A. E. Smith (Islington) said that in his borough "dangerous litter" notices had been stuck on abandoned "wrecks" which had then been taken away within seven days.
Introducing his paper, Mr. R. F. Millard emphasized that in relation to their choice of recommended refuse collection vehicles, the Working Party had placed hygiene first and cost second. During the discussion, Mr. H. J. Newcombe (Wrexham) speaking for the small authority, reminded delegates that the cleansing officer did not always have the final word on the choice of vehicles. The intial price was often the deciding factor.
Mr. D. Briscoe (Coventry) had some strong comment to make on the Report. The important question of wages had been passed off with the words, "Beyond the scope of the report", he noted. Better working conditions were called for but these, like bonus schemes which were not introduced to increase productivity but to supplement the men's earnings, were only implemented to retain labour, he said.
Where screw-crushing mechanisms were in use plastic sacks, with an attendant decomposition problem, were 98 per cent broken down, said Mr. Millard replying to the discussion. Even the continuous compressing system gave a lower figure. The Working Party Report had referred to minimum standards of collection frequently. There were various areas where one would expect standards above the minimum and in those cams one would anticipate more frequent collections.
In reply to the discussion of his paper, Mr. H. F. Critchley felt that different vehicles were essential for the collection of bulky refuse—the cost was not great and would prove well worth while. Side-loaders could, as one speaker had suggested, be used for paper sack collections but the pay load would be low. There were people who used high-sided tippers but some form of compressing unit was clearly to be preferred.
As the ITC president, Mr. J. Sumner, said at the opening of the vehicle and appliance demonstration on Wednesday, the exhibition, held in connection with the conference, is the largest in the country devoted to public cleansing. It proved a comprehensive show of the facilities available for this section of industry.
The Leach Packmaster, produced by Powell Duffryn, was shown to have a low loading rail. There is a powerful cutting mechanism with positive ram discharge. Briefly described in last week's issue of COMMERCIAL MOTOR, the new Gibson bin-lifter now has a continuous action bin discharge and packing cycle, cutting the time occupied as compared with the former procedure when the two actions were separate. From Allan Fuller Ltd, came a new Tintern trailer unit that can be employed for suction street sweeping. R. R. Stokvis and Sons Ltd introduced the Model 86, a more sophisticated unit in the Tennant Sweeper range.