Recycling rates soar in Kingston under AWC

And, the London council has attributed its success to the impact of its new 'Recycling and Landfill Waste Collection Service', which it began introducing in September 2008, offering residents a weekly collection of recycling, including food waste, and fortnightly collections of residual waste.

Commenting on the achievement, councillor Derek Osbourne, the leader of Kingston council, said: “I always expected these figures to make good reading, but to have reached a point where we are recycling 47% of our household waste just months after introducing the new collection service is remarkable.

“Credit for this achievement must go to the residents of the borough, who have embraced the new collection service and have changed the way they deal with their household waste,” he added.

The changes to the service were introduced by the council's new waste and recycling contractor Veolia, which was awarded a seven-year contract to run the operation – replacing previous contractor SITA – in May 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story). Kingston's last audited recycling rate, for 2007/08, was 25.62%.

Service

The new service took 10 weeks to roll out between September and December 2008 and saw fortnightly recycling collections replaced with a weekly commingled collection, using a box and adding new materials including portable batteries and plastic cartons.

Food waste is also now collected weekly, using a five litre kitchen caddy and a larger 23 litre container, while the fortnightly residual waste collection uses a 180 litre wheeled bin.

The council said that the largest increase it had seen in terms of tonnage was in the composting of food and kitchen waste, with the borough-wide roll-out of the service boosting this from 447 tonnes in 2007/08 to 2,417 tonnes.

It also revealed that it had seen “big increases” in recycling tonnages for cardboard, plastic bottles and drinks and food cartons.

Jump

Due the success of the new collections, Kingston said it expected its overall household recycling and composting rate to jump from the 25% recorded for 2007/08 to 35% for 2008/09 when official figures are published later this year.

And, looking to its future prospects, Cllr Osbourne said: “I am already looking forward to this time next year when we get to submit figures to Defra that reflect a full year's effect of the new collection service.

“Kingston is now recycling and composting almost half of its household waste, making us one of the best performing authorities in the country.”

“The challenge now is to build on this momentum and by this time next year be recycling and composting more than we are sending to landfill. That really would be a landmark achievement that we could all be very proud of,” he added.

Kingston is  part of the South London Waste Partnership which received £112.9 million in PFI funding in March 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story) as it looks to procure new residual waste treatment infrastructure.