The council was awarded 520,000 from the National Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund to expand its existing fortnightly paper collections to collect glass and cans in December 2002. But after this funding ran out in April, councillors unanimously agreed last week to scrap the service.
Collections of glass and cans from residents' blue boxes will end on Friday, while green waste collections will end on October 29. The town's fortnightly white bag paper collections will continue, while the council “is confident that the (green waste) collections will start again next spring”.
Karen Davis, the council's environmental commercial support manager, said: “The funds we secured from Defra to introduce the schemes have provided popular services, and the council has not taken the decision to suspend them lightly. We would urge people to continue to recycle glass and cans using the council's bring sites until kerbside collections can resume.”
Cost Sharing
Burnley considered the situation to have been made worse because of proposals from its Waste Disposal Authority, Lancashire county council, which now offers an option to share costs for recycling based on the number of households that districts provide with multi-material kerbside collections (see letsrecycle.com story).
Under Lancashire' Cost Sharing Proposal (CSP), a district would be required to enter into a cost-sharing protocol with the county by April 2004. This protocol would commit the district to providing 90% coverage of its households by 2005/6, or demonstrate why 90% coverage cannot be achieved.
Because of this change from a system in which Lancashire paid districts for the tonnage of recyclables collected, Burnley said it “cannot presently access the county council's new funding mechanism”.
It said: “Without CSP money the cost of recycling has to be met by the Council Tax payer and the costs currently on the table are considered by councillors to be too great.”
Targets
With Defra and county council funding in place, the council has increased its recycling rate from 4.5% in 2001/02 to about 15.5% for 2003/04. But even without those mechanisms, Burnley believes it is now “on target” to reach its statutory recycling target of 18% by 2005/06.
But, a statement from the council insisted: “There are no financial penalties for not meeting the recycling target.”
Sarah Schofield, head of the council's Street Scene unit, said: “The council is working hard to find a solution as quickly as possible. While the changes will have an effect on the amount we recycle we are working hard to make sure the effect is as small as possible.”
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