Alternate weekly success for Reading&#39s recycling

The Berkshire authority introduced a green waste collection service and alternate weekly collections of refuse and recycling on October 2 (see letsrecycle.com story), and revealed late last week that even without including green waste tonnage, recycling was up 33% since the launch.

Cllr Steve Waite promoting changes to recycling collections in Reading

In the first two weeks, the borough council collected 505 tonnes of material – which it said was 206 tonnes more than that collected the fortnight before.

Reading now hopes to see its rate improve even further as residents adapt to the new scheme.

Steve Waite, lead councillor for the environment, said: “While these are very early figures, it is certainly encouraging to see that recycling has gone up significantly after only two weeks of the changes being introduced. Hopefully as the scheme beds in and residents get used to what they can and can't recycle, these figures will show an even bigger increase.”

Advice
Peter Butler, Reading's streetcare manager, said that Reading had achieved the dramatic increase by asking other local authorities the best way to introduce alternate weekly schemes.

He said: “The best advice we got was to provide different bin sizes for different households. Our bins range from 140 litre bins for single householders to 360 litre bins for families of five, which meets the needs of householders and is more realistic.”

Reading also appointed two waste support officers and backed the recycling scheme with a strong marketing program, including a recycling “caravan” to help promote the changes.

However, the streetcare manager stressed that the figures were only provisional and could reflect a certain novelty value in the new scheme, which sees residual waste collected one week (grey bins) with both green waste (green bins) and recycling(burgundy bins) the next.

He explained: “People were up for it in the first few weeks and some people had a clear out of rubbish. There was also a lot of anticipation for the green bins, which could explain the tonnage.

He added: “We're all optimistic and if we can maintain it will be a real lift.”