In April, the social enterprise contractor which is owned by Bryson Charitable Group and the ECT Group, provided residents with a 55 litre red bin for recycling on top of the 55 litre black bin they already had.
Both containers are manufactured by Straight plc and the black box is for paper, foil, cans and plastic bottles while the red box is used for glass, clothes, cardboard and hand tools. The idea was to allow an even distribution of material by weight and volume to make it easier for Bryson Recycling collectors to sort the material at the kerbside.
The vehicles have compartments and tote bags so that every type of material can be separated, including different colours of glass. Recyclables are collected weekly and Carrickfergus borough council has also introduced an alternate weekly collection scheme for garden and residual waste.
Scheme promotion
In 2005/06, Carrickfergus achieved a 17.4% recycling rate – one of the lowest in Northern Ireland and in the first quarter of 2007, the council hit 19.6%. With the 76% increase in its kerbside recycling rate, the council expects expects that the overall recycling rate for the borough has significantly increased. .
The council's cleansing operations officer Jean Stewart said: “We are delighted by these results which have been the result of a strong partnership between the council and Bryson Recycling.
“The council has always been committed to kerbside sort recycling as we believe that this results in better recycling outcomes and it's gratifying to see our approach doing so well,” he added.
After material is collected it is taken to the Bryson Recycling Centre in Mallusk, Newtownabey, where 50,000 tonnes of materials is recycled on an annual basis
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