Buckinghamshire district has top dry recyclables service

letsrecycle.com today published the full local authority recycling league tables using statistics provided by Defra.

• Click here to see the council recycling league tables.

As reported on Friday, the figures put the Lincolnshire authority North Kesteven on top with a 51.5% recycling and composting rate for household waste.

The most improved local authority was Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, which achieved a 36.6% recycling and composting rate – a 22.6 percentage point increase compared to 2004/05.

Some of the highest performing councils have managed high overall recycling rates thanks to large volumes of green waste now being composted.

But Chiltern council in Buckinghamshire achieved its 36.4% overall recycling rate with just 4.3 percentage points contributed by composting. The district would have hit its 30% government recycling target with its collections of dry recyclables alone.

Other strong councils for dry recyclable services included Broadland, South Norfolk, Mole Valley, Chichester, Eastleigh, North Norfolk, Charnwood and Mid Suffolk (see table above right).

“Big effort”
Cllr John Warder, who is deputy leader of the council and responsible for the environment portfolio, paid tribute to the “keen” residents of Chiltern for their “big effort” on recycling.

He told letsrecycle.com today that the key to the success has been the council focussing on paper and glass with its kerbside recycling service – the materials are collected each fortnight using recycling boxes. Residents also have access to 100 bring bank sites where plastic and cans can be recycled.

The councillors – who is also chairman of county waste partnership committee for Buckinghamshire – revealed that a twin-bin alternate weekly scheme is now being rolled out, which could see overall recycling rates in Chiltern moving towards the 60% level.

The scheme would involve the fortnightly collection of residual waste alternated with green and food waste collections. “We are in the process of rolling out the twin bin service to 16,000 of our 36,000 households,” he said. “In trials we have seen 60% of waste recycled.”

Expansion of the twin bin scheme to the whole district will depend on the county's success in building extra in-vessel composting capacity. “We are at capacity at the composting plant at Booker in High Wycombe, so a lot depends upon the building of new capacity.”

The twin-bin scheme is expected to be district-wide before 2010, Cllr Warder said, after which the county will need to divert residual waste away from landfill through a treatment plant.

Buckinghamshire is expected to decide on residual waste plans in January, Cllr Warder said, with a meeting scheduled to decide between an MBT approach or the building of an incinerator. The meeting will also decide on financing options, with the county partnership to either seek support through the Private Finance Initiative or fund new waste plants with prudential borrowing.