Broxbourne council will hand out 26 free purple sacks for each of the 3,000 homes on the trial scheme in the Goffs Oak and Rye Road areas.
The council is trying to make it as easy as possible for residents to recycle and views the pilot as a learning process.
Broxbourne council
The scheme is based on a system used by Eden council in Cumbria, in which if householders do not stick to their set amount of free residual waste sacks, they will have to buy more.
Broxbourne will charge its residents 28 pence for each extra sack, sold in rolls of 10 from council offices or the three district “One Stop Shop” information centres.
Waste officers at the council have said waste put out in black bags or those other than the council's purple bags will not be picked up. Residents will be able to minimise the number of purple bags they use by using the kerbside recycling collection service for paper, glass and cans, the council said.
Broxbourne achieved a recycling rate – not including green waste composting – of 13% in 2005/06, and wants this to grow to more than 20%.
“Learning process”
A spokesman for Broxbourne council said: “The council is trying to make it as easy as possible for residents to recycle and views the pilot as a learning process during which feedback from residents will be encouraged.
“It is estimated that only half the community is currently using the existing kerbside services and network of bring-back recycling centres which have been the subject of considerable investment,” he added.
Broxbourne officers cite Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act (1990) as giving them the power for the waste-minimising measure of limiting the number of rubbish sacks they will collect. The legislation states that a local authority can require a household “to place the waste for collection in receptacles of a kind and number specified”.
Other local authorities have hailed such an approach as one way to reduce the amount of waste householders generate. They said that while local authorities have a statutory duty to provide a waste collection service, they do not have to collect unlimited quantities of waste.
Joy Blizzard, spokeswoman for the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee said of the Broxbourne scheme: “It's good to look at new ways of minimising waste. I can't see that this scheme is any different to giving people a bin but not collecting any side waste.”
Mark Shelton, last year's Local Authority Recycling Champion in the annual Awards for Excellence, said: “We have got to try and reduce waste going to landfill so I don't think it's unreasonable to introduce this scheme. Cambridgeshire has had to work to reduce waste by having alternate weekly collections and a no side waste policy, and what Broxbourne is doing is an extension of that.”
Eden
Eden council has been running such a bag-charging system for around 80% of its households since 2004. It gives householders two blue bags per week for residual waste and a green box for recyclables – paper, cans and glass bottles – although in rural areas, this is restricted to paper and cardboard.
Eden council introduced the scheme because of its high residual waste levels, and in 2005/06 saw recycling rates reach 40%. The council's assistant director for environmental services Andrew Yates said: “Since it all settled down, we don't get any complaints and we haven't noticed any increase in fly-tipping.”
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