Camden Community Recycling, which runs collections for Camden council, rolled-out a pilot collection scheme for 2,500 flats across the London borough in May. This was funded by a 70,000 grant from Camden's allocation of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.
The project is to last for 12 months, assessing participation rates of the properties when recycling is collected from each door step.
Now at the project's halfway point, the council has said the results so far have debunked the myth that low-income households on housing estates and in tower blocks are not interested in recycling.
Julie Griffiths, senior projects and policy officer for the London borough of Camden, said: “We have been really impressed to find that we're getting participation rates of around 50-60% and on some estates as much as 90%. For the rest of the borough we have an average of 30-40% participation rate.”
Each household from the 14 tower blocks on the scheme has a 55 litre box, which they can use to place glass, plastic, bottles, textiles and cans for recycling. Camden Community Recycling operatives collect the boxes from each individual household each week and empty them into a larger container before returning the box back to the residents.
Incentive
Ms Griffiths explained that the range of materials collected from these households has increased since the pilot started. “At first, residents were just putting out one or two different materials for recycling, so we told them that if they managed to recycle three or more different materials we would give them a free energy saving lightbulb, and we noticed a difference in the variety we were collecting,” she said.
Out of the 95,000 households in Camden, around 26% are flats and tower blocks and most of these currently have a recycling point based with their normal refuse bins. Ms Griffiths suggested the higher participation rate at the homes on the pilot might be because it was more convenient for residents to have the bin collected from the door than have to take it down several flights of stairs or in a lift.
If the pilot proves to show consistently higher participation rates by its May 2005 end, Ms Griffiths said the council would look at providing a similar service for other flats. However, she admitted the cost and labour involved could be very high. “It would undoubtably be expensive, but if the trial is a success we will have a good reason to consider this method.”
She noted that the use of bring banks in the areas where the pilot is running had not decreased since May.
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