Harrow council has opted for a radical three company system for the transport and sorting of its commingled recycling collections. The three businesses are contracted to provide the service, but no guarantees are given over the amount of waste each will be expected to process.

On June 1, the London borough council introduced a framework agreement for three contractors, Viridor, Greenstar and Greencycle, to collect and transport commingled recyclables from its civic amenity site. These will then be taken to a materials recycling facility of the company's choosing, to be sorted and sold on to reprocessors.

Organic waste collections operating in Harrow

The four-year framework follows an interim contract for the service held by Grosvenor between July 2007 and May 31 2008 (passing over to Viridor when they bought the company for £82 million last December), and a document from a council cabinet meeting reveals that Viridor/Grosvenor will, at first, continue to operate the majority of the service.

It states: "It is proposed that, initially, the council will continue to use Grosvenor for the bulk of this work on the basis that the existing system meets the council's operational requirements at the civic amenity site and works well."

However, under the framework agreement, the council has no commitment to offer a guaranteed level of work to anyone of the three contractors, as the cabinet document explains.

"Under the framework mechanism, the award does not require the council to guarantee any specific quantity of work to any of the appointed tenders," it says.

And, the deal includes the opportunity for Harrow to gradually move the service across to one of the other contractors, explaining that "the cheaper suppliers will be trialled to establish that they are able to meet these requirements".

"If these trials prove successful, the service will be migrated towards them over the period of the contract," it added.

With Harrow collecting up to 20,000 tonnes of commingled recyclables a year through its in-house recycling collections, Viridor has traditionally used its Crayford MRF in East London, currently the largest in the UK, to sort and then sell on the council's commingled collections.

Greenstar MRF

And, it is thought that any materials sorted by Greenstar under the agreement could eventually be sent to a new huge 500,000 tonne per-annum capacity MRF that has revealed it is planning to build in London at an as-yet-unspecified location. In the short-term it is not known where Greenstar would take the materials too although it has recently a MRF in the Midlands.

The council's 2008/09 budget for processing its commingled collections has a base level of £24 per tonne, and it states that, through continued use of Viridor, "savings will be generated from day 1 of the contract".

However, it also reveals that the per tonne prices offered by Greenstar and Greencycle were cheaper than Virdor's, explaining that: "Additional savings will be generated as and when the service is migrated towards the other suppliers - following their demonstration of capability and capacity."

It added: "However, the council will have to treat with extreme caution on the lowest bid, ensuring that the contractor is operating and environmentally viable before waste contractor is awarded."

Flexibility

The decision to let a framework agreement came after Harrow had employed outsourcing experts Capita to identify the most suitable contracting process for the borough's needs and to then run it.

Andrew Baker, the council's New Harrow Project Officer, told letsrecycle.com that Capita had "said it would give us a bit more flexibility".

While explaining that it was "too early" to gauge just how well the new arrangement was operating, he did indicate that the council has begun to talk to both Greenstar and Greencycle about the practical role they might play in the agreement.

"We've made contact with both of them and we've had one of them for an initial talk, and we're going to do the same with the other one," he said.

"The discussions are about practical things, like how much tonnage we're going to expect them to deal with," he added.

Though unable to reveal the exact details of the trials, costs or migration of services that might occur under the agreement, Mr Baker did explain that issues relating to the overuse of the council's 20-year-old CA site at Forward Way were vital to deciding which contractors to include within the framework.

He said: "What we're looking for it to balance inputs and outputs, that's an important element of deciding which contractor to go with."

With both the quality of materials collected in commingled collections, and their relative cost compared to source-separated kerbside collections, proving to be increasingly debated issues, Mr Baker commented on the council's decision to move to commingled collections, and as a result collect glass.

"There were contractors out there who are willing to take glass as a commingled material, they're telling us it's not a problem, and its cut our collections costs and allowed us to collect a wider range of materials," he said.

Compulsory

Harrow was one of the first councils in the UK to introduce compulsory recycling (see letsrecycle.com story), and Mr Baker explained that, two years into the scheme, they still haven't fined a householder for failing to recycle.

"We use compulsory recycling very much as a means of getting the message across," he said. "It's a question of education and persuasion, not enforcement."

Residents must recycle cans, tins, plastic bottles, glass, paper and garden waste.

While it achieved a 27% recycling and composting rate in 2006-07, the council increased that rate to 39% in 2007-08, and Mr Baker also revealed that it has resolved its previous problems relating to processing the green and food waste it collects.

Last summer, the council had to send 5% of its food and green waste to landfill, due to its residents recycling too much of the waste for the contract it had agreed with processor West London Composting (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, Mr Baker indicated that "that's been resolved. West London Waste Authority has taken action to fill that gap".