Worcestershire, alongside neighbours Herefordshire council, has set itself the target of achieving a 75% participation rate in its kerbside recycling scheme. The target has been set as part of a scheme funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme.
” We believe that we have a good recycling scheme here and the best way for us to increase our rate is to increase the participation rate “
– Laura Preece, Herefordshire council
The “Target 75” campaign was kicked off at the beginning of this year with the intention of getting 75% of each council's residents regularly using the kerbside collection schemes on offer.
And Worcestershire has this week added a group of door-steppers to the campaign in order to compliment its push for increased participation.
Worcestershire
The council has tried to make recycling as easy as possible for its residents by handing out advice booklets on compost bins, waste disposal units and can crushers. It has also converted an old library bus into a recycling vehicle, which is taken around the county to spread the recycling message.
Jane Paynter, recycling officer at Worcestershire, said: “The bus has been a great success and it is often packed, people seem interested in finding out what could be made from recycled material. The door-steppers will now be looking to capitalise on the success of the bus to push the participation rate even higher.”
Worcestershire council has a recycling rate of 19%, it is trying to reach a target of 30% for 2005/06.
With the campaign half way through the two authorities are beginning to analyse results and although the strides taken have been positive, both council's have said that it is too early yet to establish how successful the scheme has been.
Herefordshire
Herefordshire went into the scheme with a participation rate of 60%. The council runs a multi-sack recycling scheme, with purple sacks for paper and textiles collected one week and clear sacks for cans and plastic collected the following week. The council's kerbside collection scheme is run by waste management scheme Focsa.
The scheme is currently available to around 40,000 of the households in the county, with a further 36,000 expected to join the scheme over the course of 2006.
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Laura Preece, recycling officer at Herefordshire council said: “We believe that we have a good recycling scheme here and the best way for us to increase our rate is to increase the participation rate, rather than collecting new materials.”
Herefordshire has said that it has a recycling rate of 22% for 2004/05, it has already hit its 2005/06 recycling rate of 21%.
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