AbitibiBowater wins Warwickshire contract

The company – that started off as a paper recycler before branching out into the collection of other materials like metal cans, textiles and glass bottles – will now work with Nuneaton & Bedworth borough council to include mixed cardboard collection as well as plastics like yoghurt pots, ice cream containers and confectionary packaging.

The five-year deal will see Canadian-owned AbitibiBowater taking over the existing red box kerbside scheme from ECT Recycling at the beginning of April, adding the mixed plastics and cardboard from the end of the month.

By that time, it will be providing weekly door-to-door collections to around 49,000 homes across the Warwickshire borough.

Commenting on the new contract, AbitibiBowater business development director Mandy Kelly said: “We already provide recycling services to the neighbouring local authorities of North Warwickshire, Hinckley & Bosworth and South Derbyshire. With plans for our new transfer station in the region, due to come on stream shortly, we looked for increased efficiencies on the ground and were in a strong position to meet Nuneaton & Bedworth's cost and service parameters.”

AbitibiBowater will also service Nuneaton & Bedworth's mini-recycling centres and bring sites, although it has no plans to collect mixed plastics from bring banks at this stage.

Labour-run Nuneaton & Bedworth council has increased local recycling rates from just 6% of household waste in 2002/03 to 26% in 2006/07. Conservative opposition councillors have expressed concern in recent meetings at the council's recycling improvement lagging behind other authorities, however – noting the borough's ranking at 272nd in the 2006/07 local authority recycling league table (see letsrecycle.com league tables).

The council is now pressing Warwickshire county council to provide an in-vessel composting facility that would allow food waste collection in the future.

Participation

In the mean time, the authority has singled out mixed plastics and mixed cardboard as the next step in improving local recycling rates.

A spokesman for AbitibiBowater told letsrecycle.com that a key reason for offering the collection of mixed plastics was that it should encourage greater participation among householders of all materials, with evidence suggesting that collecting a broader range of materials would see householders more keen to take part in recycling.

Nuneaton & Bedworth council's assistant director of public amenities, Peter Benham, said: “We expect the inclusion of board and plastics to attract new recyclers, adding incremental tonnage and pushing our dry recyclables rate up from the current 12.5% to 17% by 2009/10, an increase of more than a third.”

Nuneaton & Bedworth, which was forced to scrap alternate weekly collections five years ago because of complaints from residents (see letsrecycle.com story), selected AbitibiBowater for the new recycling contract through a tender process requesting the collection of mixed plastics.

AbitibiBowater will have to export collected plastics for reprocessing in the short term, to be made into products like clothing and garden furniture, but the company's spokesman told letsrecycle.com on Friday that it is committed to moving towards a domestic reprocessing route for the material.

The spokesman said: “We are actively working with UK partners to develop UK markets, and we're confident that with the rapid development of technology we will be able to keep the materials in this country.”

AbitibiBowater already works with other recycling companies Berryman, Novelis Recycling and the Salvation Army as part of the “End User Consortium” to enable a range of materials to be collected through its local authority services on top of the paper going to the AbitibiBowater mill at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

Despite adding mixed plastics to its service in Nuneaton & Bedworth, the firm said it was still maintaining its stance that materials should be collected separately at the kerbside, rather than commingled.

“Collecting mixed plastics is no different from collecting cans or bottles,” the company spokesman said, “it's just the end users are a little further afield at present.”