Pushing for a 30% recycling rate in order to meet a local public service agreement with the government, Barnet opted to become the first – and so far only – council to threaten householders with legal action if they did not use their recycling service.
 Barnet recycling officer Nicola Buck (centre, with ITN's Mary Nightingale and Ron Humphreys of Abitibi-Consolidated Recycling Europe) collected a trophy at last year's prestigious Awards for Excellence. |
And, one year on from the decision to expand the compulsory scheme borough-wide, the decision appears to have been vindicated.
The council has told letsrecycle.com that its current recycling rate is now 29.97%, with more than three in four households now actively involved with the weekly black box scheme.
The recycling rate in Barnet has more than doubled since 2002/03.
Barnet's cabinet member for environment, Cllr Matthew Offord, said: “The success of compulsory recycling has meant that we are very close to a 30 per cent recycling rate, our target for the year. This figure shows how well residents have responded to the initiative, and currently over 80 per cent are using the black box scheme.”
Award
The high-profile Barnet scheme won the prestigious Local Authority Initiative prize at last October's Awards for Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management. Under the scheme, the borough's 130,000 households are told they could be fined up to 1,000 if they “persistently and deliberately” fail to use their recycling service.
Legal action is very much a last resort and there have not been any actions made against householders so far, the council confirmed. Before any legal steps are taken, offending households are sent information on their recycling scheme and further inaction will mean a visit from recycling staff.
Barnet's trial area, which started the compulsory scheme six months before it went borough-wide, saw only a handful of households reaching the real threat of legal action. But, all households among the 25,000 homes on the pilot ultimately succumbed to the pressure to recycle within 12 months of the pilot starting.
Interest
In its first nine months, Cllr Offord said it had increased its collection tonnage by over 3,000 tonnes, while requests for black boxes had “soared”.
Cllr Offord added that dozens of other local authorities had their eyes on Barnet's system with a view to how it might work in their areas. He said: “Interest from other local authorities continues to be high, and to date 74 have contacted us to see how we manage the scheme but as yet we are still the only council bold enough to enforce it under law.”
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