Bolsover to save 200,000 a year by moving to AWC

At present, the local authoritys in-house team collects black wheeled bins every week. However, the council has announced that from November 1 it will be reducing the number of collections to encourage recycling.

This will free up some of the councils residual waste collection crews to collect green waste fortnightly which the council currently has to pay 200,000 a year extra to pay for. The council said this was important because it needed to save 2 million this year due to public spending cuts.

The recent announcement of the move to fortnightly residual waste collections comes just two months after Bolsover rolled out a new kerbside recycling collection service for residents.

From June 2011, Bolsovers 34,000 households have had a Burgundy-colour wheeled bin for dry recyclables including card, plastics, textiles, cans and glass. The bin also has an inner caddy for paper. The bins are collected every fortnight under a five-year contract agreed in November 2010 with Alfreton-based HW Martin, who send the mixed recyclables toits MRF for sorting.

Previously, cans, glass and metals were collected in a blue box by the councils former recycling contractor Palm Recycling, while paper was collected in a separate blue bag. The materials were then segregated at source onto stillage vehicles.

Under both systems, kerbside recycling collections are carried out fortnightly.

The H W Martin contract is based on tonnage and Adrian Lowery, street services manager in Bolsover, explained that it was a lot cheaper than the previous contract with Palm.

While he would not divulge the exact value, he commented: For the first time we are paying a contract rate lower than the recycling credit we receive from our waste disposal authority.

Improved

Already, the new scheme appears to have improved Bolsovers 27% recycling and composting rate for 2010/11.

Mr Lowery said: We are now in the eleventh week of the Burgundy bin scheme, with seven fully operational weeks and we are already showing an average of a 115% increase in kerbside recycling.

Bolsovers cabinet member for the environment, councillor Dennis Kelly, said: Residents across the district now have three bins to dispose of, recycle and compost their waste, compared to the one they had a few years ago. And from the comments and data we have been receiving the amount of waste collected through the black bins has decreased so it makes sense for us to move to an alternative weekly black bin collection.”

Ahead of the move to fortnightly collections of residual waste, all residents in Bolsover will receive an introductory flier and an information pack. The council’s waste team isalso looking to second someone from another local authority who had experience in promotional work and it will also be hiring two ‘doorsteppers’ to supervise the service change and make sure people are putting the right bins out at the right time.

Cllr Kelly said: This is one of our biggest services and one that every household in the district receives, so it is vital we get the communication right when implementing these new arrangements. We will make sure every household receives the information they need, so they know exactly when their bins are going to be collected and what waste to put in which one.