The introduction of commingled collections and the inclusion of mixed plastics at the kerbside helped South Oxfordshire district council become the top performing local authority for dry recycling in 2009/10.
This means the Conservative-controlled council was placed second behind Staffordshire Moorlands for overall recycling and composting according to WasteDataFlow returns for 2009/10.
South Oxfordshire- along with neighbouring Vale of White Horse district council – signed a £50 million contract with services firm Verdant Group to overhaul its kerbside recycling service in January 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).
This service change saw it move from black box source separated collections of dry recyclables to commingled collections in a 240litre wheeled bin. And, it also introduced weekly food waste collections through a 25 litre kitchen caddy.
Commenting on the change, Mike MacKay, shared head of commercial services at South Oxfordshire, said: “It is quite clear from the feedback that from residents that there is an ease of using the system and the fact that the bins are bigger than the boxes naturally makes them easier to use to recycle.”
In addition to moving to commingled collections, the council expanded the range of materials it collects – Adding glass bottles and jars for the first time, as well as a wide range of mixed plastic material.
“What we tell customers is we can take any plastic except cling film and that means plastics are up to about 10% of the mix of recyclables that we are collecting,” Mr MacKay said.
“The other thing about South Oxfordshire is we didn't used to collect [glass] bottles, and that is about 35% of our mix. So if we add the bottles and the plastics together we are talking about 50% of the mix of material we are getting.”
Response
Assessing the response to the system, Mr MacKay said that the “geography and demography” of the local authority helped as it enabled the council to roll-out a service change which included food waste collections without issue.
He said: “I have got to say that we are quite fortunate in being a rural district with fairly, shall I say, prosperous residents on the whole. We have around 56,000 properties, of which only 3,000 are communal properties, so, obviously, if we are a city with a lot of flats it is a lot more difficult to get people interested and participating in recycling.
“We have residents who are naturally geared towards what they do with waste but I think our first customer satisfaction survey for the first months showed that 91% of residents were very satisfied with the service and that is just because of the ease of use.”
Food
Mr MacKay said he expected the council's food waste collection service to play an increasingly important role in its overall performance in the coming years.
“The volume of food waste we have been taking is far higher than what we would have expected and again residents are very keen to see their food waste composted,” he said. “We are very lucky in Oxfordshire in that the county council has a contract with Agrivert to develop three organic treatment facilities.”
Despite topping the 2009/10 table, South Oxfordshire's performance was below that of the top performing council in 2008/09. Over the course of the previous financial year, Worcester city council achieved a 36.01% dry recycling rate using its in-house collection service to run an alternate weekly residual waste and commingled dry recyclables collection (see letsrecycle.com story).
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