Brent has been running a green waste service since May this year, and has so far collected 3,000 tonnes of green waste from the 30,000 households on the service.
Until this month, the waste was being treated at West London Waste's site at Park Royal transfer station in West London, but now it will be composted at WLC's 2 million in-vessel facility at Harefield, also in West London.
Chris Whyte, Brent's recycling manager said the new site is nearer for the council's collections and so fits better with the proximity principle. “The council's link up with West London Composting was essential for the development of recycling in Brent,” he said.
The council hopes to extend its fortnightly green waste collection serviceto a further 30,000 of its 102,000 households in April next year, and will also then collect card with the green waste, to be composted together at the Park Royal site.
In April, the green waste service will be extended to include food waste. The borough will also move to a weekly green waste collection in April, but Mr Whyte said there are no plans at the moment to switch to a fortnightly residual waste collection service.
Improving rate
Mr Whyte said there had been a noticeable improvement in Brent's recycling rate since the start of its green waste service and a weekly dry recyclables service in May this year. “We had a recycling rate of 8% for 2003/04 but we're up to about 12% since the start of the new service. We ran an awareness campaign called 'get sorting', funded by the London Recycling Fund, to launch the services and we received 5,000 extra requests for the 55 litre dry recycling box,” he said.
About 78% of the borough is on the dry recyclables scheme, said Mr Whyte. Residents can place all types of dry recyclables in their box, excluding plastic, which can be taken to the council's civic amenity site at the Park Royal site.
Mr Whyte explained that the remaining households in the borough were mostly restricted from collection because of a lack of space for recyclable containers, but the possibility of smaller containers was being looked at, he said.
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