Bristol householders “can recycle 75% of their waste”

Last week saw Bristol city council begin collections of food waste, cardboard and garden waste from around 30,000 of its households.

” The response to these changes has generally been extremely positive and I would like to thank the people of Bristol for playing their part. “
– Cllr Gary Hopkins, Bristol city council
And coupled with an already established weekly collection service, charged garden waste scheme and plastic banks across the city, the council has said residents can now recycle 75% of the contents of their bins.

The city council believes that it is the first city in the UK to run large-scale food waste collections from its households – with a further 120,000 residents to join the scheme in August.

Each home on the scheme has received a small kitchen caddy to store the waste before it is transferred to their brown organic waste bin. Cardboard can be left next to the bin.

New plant
Organic waste is being taken to the New Earth Solutions composting plant in Poole, Dorset. Bristol will continue to send its waste there until a new plant is built in the city. A spokeswoman for the council told letsrecycle.com that possible sites were now being investigated and it was hoped that a plant would be built by 2007.

Under the city's system, organic waste will be collected every week along with the black recycling box for glass, cans, paper and rags.

Bristol's food waste collections are only currently available to low-rise households on the kerbside collection scheme. But the spokeswoman added that a consultation was currently taking place to establish the best way of collecting food waste from flats.

Recresco
Residents in Bristol are also provided with a comprehensive network of plastics recycling banks – 28 banks have now been provided by collection contractor Recresco. Bristol council has said that plastic recycling is up by 140% in the last year as a result.

Bristol is also encouraging residents with a garden to buy a low cost composter and compost their garden waste, they can however pay 21for a separate green bin and subscribe to the weekly collection service – charged at 55p per week.

As a result of the comprehensive recycling services offered, Bristol city council now believes it can switch residual waste collections to a fortnightly basis.

Councillor Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for the environment, said: “By taking this decisive step we are helping to protect the local, national and global environment and saving council tax payers from potentially enormous hikes in their bills.

“The response to these changes has generally been extremely positive and I would like to thank the people of Bristol for playing their part and showing how much they care about the world we live in,” he added.

In 2005/06 Bristol council recycled around 18% of its residents waste, missing a government set 27% target.