Birmingham reveals glass and plastic recycling plan

A city council spokesman told letsrecycle.com today that plans are in place to deliver fortnightly mixed recyclables collections for 360,000 households by 2008, on alternate weeks to existing paper-only collections.

” We are committed to offering recycling services direct to the doorstep for as many people as possible. “
– Cllr Len Gregory, Birmingham CC
The new collections, already being trialled among 100,000 homes in the south of the city, will include the recycling of glass and plastics that would otherwise have gone to landfill.

Cllr Len Gregory, Birmingham's cabinet member for transportation and street services, said: “We are committed to offering recycling services direct to the doorstep for as many people as possible.”

Criticism
Last week saw local environment minister Ben Bradshaw and Birmingham's Labour MP Lynne Jones criticising the Tory-run council for not collecting plastics.

In Defra questions in the House of Commons on Thursday, Ms Jones said she was “ashamed” of her local council, and claimed that a lack of local plastics reprocessors and the city's Tyseley energy-from-waste incinerator was “discouraging councils from recycling”.

Responding to the point about Birmingham city council, Mr Bradshaw said: “I hope that it makes more of an effort to provide the sort of facilities that my honourable friend the member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, describes.”

Markets
Mr Bradshaw said he would look into the issue regarding regional shortages of plastics reprocessing, but insisted there were markets available for the material.

“Plastics and glass are collected by local authorities around the country. There is a good price for plastics at the moment because of the high oil price. As many honourable members will know, we export quite a lot of our waste for recycling in other countries. I am not quite sure why there is a particular problem in her region, but I will certainly look into the matter,” the minister added.

Birmingham city council said expectations for the success of its kerbside recycling services meant many bring bank facilities would no longer be needed.

Cllr Gregory explained: “Unfortunately a number of recycling points can suffer from fly-tipping and abuse, turning them into eyesores. But now, thanks to the introduction of the household collections, we are in a position to consider removing the units without it impacting upon people's ability to recycle.”