Carrickfergus kerbside recycling goes borough-wide

Community recycler Bryson House Recycling will provide a weekly kerbside collection to over 15,000 households in Carrickfergus from April 2004 and another council to be announced this week. The funding will last two years, and then the councils will go out to tender for full kerbside services.

”Carrickfergus will be the first borough in Northern Ireland to see the Kerbie box recycling scheme provided to 100% of its households “
– Eric Randall, Bryson House Recycling
Bryson House Recycling is a partnership between ECT, the UK's largest community recycling group and Northern Irish social services charity Bryson House. The partnership was announced in November 2003 and is aimed at providing local authorities in Northern Ireland with kerbside collections (see letsrecycle.com story).

Trial
A nine-month trial has already been conducted by Bryson House Recycling in Carrickfergus, which covered nearly 4,000 households and achieved an 80% participation rate.

Alderman David Hilditch, chairman of environmental services committee at Carrickfergus council, said: “I am delighted that we are seeing this scheme being rolled out to the whole borough. We are keen in Carrickfergus to promote recycling and I would encourage all our residents to support this very welcome initiative. I am looking forward to taking part.”

First

Eric Randall of Bryson House Recycling welcomed the council's decision to ratify its partnership with the community recycler. He said: “We are delighted with this decision which means that Carrickfergus will be the first borough in Northern Ireland to see the Kerbie box recycling scheme provided to 100% of its households. We're delighted at the opportunity to provide our very popular service to all 15,000 households in Carrickfergus. We are committed to providing the best possible recycling service available.”

Through the “Kerbie” box recycling scheme Bryson House Recycling hopes to collect 1,700 tonnes of materials a year. Materials collected by the scheme will go to various recyclers including Shotton paper mill, Irish glass recycler Quinn Glass, Alcan and Corus can recyclers, a local textiles recycling firm and the plastics will be exported.