Funded by 72,500 from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, the one-year pilot doorstep recycling scheme is being tested across 14 estates covering more than 2,500 households. If participation rates are high it will be extended across the north London borough.
Residents will be issued with green boxes which they can either store in their flats or in corridors if they do not cause an obstruction. The boxes can be filled with newspapers, magazines and junk mail, cardboard, glass bottles and jars, cans, foil, old clothing and plastic bottles and left outside the door.
Working in partnership with local not-for-profit organisation Camden Community Recycling, the council will collect the boxes from outside the flats once a week, and take the contents to a vehicle for sorting.
Camden hopes that it will encourage residents to recycle who would not do so otherwise by collecting from directly outside people's doors.
The council already has recycling sites at 160 housing estates across Camden. A spokesman for the council said the 14 estates covered by the pilot were areas where the town hall had identified a need to collect more recyclables.
The scheme was running as a pilot because of the high cost and labour requirements, he added. “It's quite labour intensive, getting people to go up and down all those stairs, but if it works out on these 14 estates then we will roll it out across the borough,” he explained.
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