The council has achieved a recycling rate of about 14%, primarily through newspaper collection and the mill which receives the kerbside newspapers – Aylesford Newsprint – considers the city to be one of its best performing areas. Householders in the city now place the paper for collection in carrier bags or in piles outside their houses but under the bag scheme householders in Derwent will start using these instead.
Clare Wood, marketing manager for Derby said: “We are very pleased with the success of the recycling scheme so far and we hope that by giving householders heavy duty, reusable bags to put the paper in, we will increase the amount collected even further. Bags have so far been distributed to householders and businesses in the Derwent area of Derby along with a calendar of collection dates and new promotional material to encourage recycling.”
The success of the Derby scheme is also put down to the fact that the workforce which operates the collection service is keen to achieve high recycling rates and also seeks to ensure minimum contamination levels for the paper.
The bags will be collected every two weeks, emptied into the PaperBack vehicle and returned to residents. The PaperBack service has been operating across the city since November 1996. During that time, it has collected almost 20,000 tonnes of paper for recycling.
Ms Wood said that Derby is considering a kerbside collection scheme for other materials. It currently has a number of banks forplastic, glass, cardboard, textiles and cans. Textiles are also collected at the kerbside in conjunction with the paper scheme and sent to the Padley Group.
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