HW Martin will pay the council compensation of £20,000 to end the contract which it has held since 2011, and had been due to run for a further 4.5 years. The 23 bring sites run by HW Martin will be removed by the end of February.
Under the contract HW Martin was responsible for servicing the sites at no cost to the council, collecting dry recyclables including paper, card, glass, cans, beverage cartons and plastic.
According to Derbyshire Dales, the service had originally been set up for the collection of materials that could not presented at the kerbside by residents, however since a comprehensive change to the council’s recycling collection service in 2012, this was no longer the case.
Usage
In documents presented to the council ahead of its meeting to decide on the future of the service, council officers noted that there had been a 75% drop in the tonnage of recyclable waste deposited at the sites since 2011/12.
The report added that due to the reduction tonnage and a high level of contamination, the contract is no longer ‘financially sustainable’. It said: “In 2014/15 the bring sites generated 443.30 tonnes of material and provided the council with a recycling credit income from Derbyshire county council of £22,289. In comparison 530 tonnes of material are collected from kerbside every month confirming that only a small percentage of the population use these sites.
“Recently HW Martin has been providing the council with a breakdown of the materials collected in the containers. The information provided shows the current contamination levels. The current contamination rate at the sites is 43%. This material is made up of non-recyclable materials that are disposed of at landfill and incurs disposal costs. These figures do not include the waste deposited at the sites that is not contained in the bins and removed by the Clean and Green Team. This service currently costs approximately £16,000.”
Income
The report added that if HW Martin had deducted the contamination tonnage from the overall material collected the recycling credit received would have fallen to £13,130. It noted that the provision of the service was no longer economically feasible without including a disposal cost to the council.
Charity banks for clothes, books and shoes are still in operation, and the council says that these will continue to be operated ‘until such a time that a request is received from the landowner or charities to remove them’.
Derbyshire Dales is not the first council to move to scrap bring sites for recyclables in recent weeks, with fellow Derbyshire authority High Peak also moving to scrap the service at 10 sites (see letsrecycle.com story). Elsewhere, South Buckinghamshire council is removing bring sites from some areas – such as its banks at the Tesco site at Loudwater.
Andrew Bird, chairman of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) confirmed that many local authorities are now looking at moving away from bring bank sites as a means of collecting recyclables from householders.
He said: “I think they [recycling bring banks] have probably had their day by now. If you have got good infrastructure at the kerbside it does beg the question do you need them? A lot of that depends on the area, in dense urban areas where it is difficult to get a good kerbside scheme there might still be a need. They have played an important role in the past, but that is changing now.”
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