Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to the Confidential Waste?

All confidential waste is taken by city council to the Eastcroft incinerator which profides heating for St Anns, Victoria centre, the new Tax offices and City Centre businesses. Find out more...

Does ncn recycle its waste?

Yes – all waste is taken for recycling by wastecycle – they separate out any materials that can be recycled. Between 2007 and 2010 83% of waste was recycled and for 10/11 90% of waste is being recycled. The main thing that prevents waste from being recycled is food waste in the bins. We are going to install food bins in refectories to reduce any materials being rejected for recycling.

What happens to all the used toner cartridges across the College? Are they recycled? At the moment I take the ones from my office home and give them to a charity that recycles them. I’m worried that some staff aren’t aware that they can be recycled or what the College does with them so I suspect some of them might go in the bin.

ncn does recycle all toner cartridges and all staff are encouraged to put their old toner in the box when they replace with a new one, clearly mark it for recycling and notify the relevant person in order to have it collected. The ICT technicians on each site manage this process. We agree that the contacts and process for doing this is not communicated well enough so we will be addressing this across the College via this website.

I am based at Basford and most days during term time I see that there is lots of wood in the skips outside Construction – is this recycled via the skip hire that they use or is it just dumped? I often wonder what it could be reused for – even if it is only fuel as there seems so much of it.

Much of the wood waste is recycled where possible by the company that collects it. Unfortunately there will always be some wastage given that a lot of the wood is glued, screwed and stapled as part of student projects and the College will endeavour to keep this to a minimum. You may be interested to hear that the sawdust that is produced within the workshops is sent to Wastecycle separately in order to be produced into animal bedding.

Do we buy ‘Fair Trade’ & Local?

We do not have any actual policies on procuring Fair Trade goods. Of course some budgets probably will not stretch to the Fair Trade items as the goods themselves tend not to be as competitively priced so I think it is fair to say these are made at the Budget Holders discretion.

As for suppliers we have a mixed bag of local and regional providers. There isn’t , at present , any formal direction to purchase from locally-based companies and in fact the general push currently is towards contracts let by the CPC ( Crescent Purchasing Consortium ) and these are usually national companies.

In our tendered contracts we do insist that all packaging is taken way when items such as Furniture , P.C.s etc. are delivered ( unless we are storing them before use and need them protected against damage). Also as part of the evaluation criteria, we ask how the bidder proposes to support the College in future development and try to assess the bidders understanding of the College needs and this includes awareness of the environment and students perception of those type of issues. Where companies demonstrate that they are actively reducing their carbon footprint they are awarded higher scores. Again, I am not aware of any formal policy.

Why are lights left of at Adams refectory over night and over the weekend?

This is due to security reasons. We need to have the lights on as if they were off and the refectory was broken into via the windows, we wouldn’t be able to see them on security tapes. Having the lights on also deters burglaries.