“Behavioural change” needed to boost recycling in Hampshire

Speaking at this week's British Plastics Federation event Emerging Opportunities for Plastics, the Hampshire waste partnership said that “behavioural change” on the part of residents is needed to get beyond a 30% household waste recycling rate.

Project Integra is a partnership between Hampshire county council, the counties' 11 district and 2 unitary councils as well as waste contractor Onyx. The partnership has invested in a range of new infrastructure in the last decade including kerbside recycling services, recycling centres, sorting plants, composting sites and energy recovery facilities.

” The new challenge for us is to encourage our residents to start recycling more.“
– Steve Read, Project Integra
The partnership says up to 95% of households now have a kerbside collection of recyclables such as newspapers, magazines, plastic bottles, and food and drinks cans. And, Project Integra is trialling a glass collection service with recycling firm Recresco.

But Steve Read, executive officer at Project Integra, said now that most of the required infrastructure was in place, there was a major need for awareness among residents. He stressed that the partnership could only recycle as much material as they were provided with by householders.

Mr Read said: “The Project Integra strategy started in 1995 and through this strategy we feel we now have the infrastructure in place to achieve a high recycling rate. But we still only manage to recycle 28% of our waste.

“The new challenge for us is to encourage our residents to start recycling more. We can only recycle as much as they are prepared to give,” he added.

Poll
Mr Read said that the partnership had taken a poll on waste and recycling issues in Hampshire, speaking to almost 1,500 Hampshire residents. The poll revealed that 26% believed that the waste they separate out for recycling is simply dumped together with unsorted waste when collected. He said instead residents need to be shown the destination of the waste they separate for recycling.

The Hampshire poll also revealed that residents were unsure of what could be recycled. When asked what prevented them from making a greater effort to recycle, the second highest response from residents was that they were unsure which materials could be recycled. The most prevalent response was that there was a lack of kerbside collection services.

Mr Read explained that Hampshire was now beginning to work with schools and communities in an attempt to educate them further in recycling, in order to move towards higher recycling targets. Project Integra manages over 846,000 tonnes of household waste each year, and is aiming to recycle 40% of this by 2005/06.