One of the four boroughs in the Western Riverside Waste Authority, Wandsworth introduced its orange bag scheme in April last year with help from the London Recycling Fund.
 Wandsworth's orange sack recycling service has been hailed as a success |
But, other boroughs in the Authority – Hammersmith & Fulham, Lambeth and Kensington & Chelsea – missed their statutory targets for 2003/04. London Remade, the technical partner for the Authority's awareness campaign, said that the boroughs had introduced the orange sack scheme too late to reach their targets, and the “full impact” of the scheme “is yet to be realised “.
Under the scheme, households receive regular supplies of free orange sacks in which glass, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and cans are all collected every week along with normal rubbish. Wandsworth achieved a household waste recycling rate of 17.5% for the financial year 2003/04, an improvement on the 10.5% figure it achieved the year before.
Dee Moloney, campaign manager at London Remade, said: “The orange sack scheme’s success is in its simplicity. Wandsworth’s opt-out system means that all residents in low-rise properties have the opportunity to participate with minimum effort, placing all dry recyclables in the orange sacks.”
Wandsworth is also introducing 1,200 “orange-themed” bring banks to provide recycling services for flats in the borough.
Door-stepping
The borough's recycling programme has been supported by the Rethink Rubbish Western Riverside campaign, an initiative funded by Cory Environmental through the Landfill Tax Credit scheme. The campaign has published a guide to recycling in the WRWA boroughs, and as well as putting on supermarket awareness events, it continues to run door-stepping campaigns to bring the recycling message to householders face-to-face.
Jim Fielder, campaign manager for Rethink Rubbish Western Riverside, explained: “Door-stepping effectively provides a captured audience – you can immediately seize people’s attention and enter into a two-way dialogue. Unlike other communication methods, such as leaflets, door-stepping allows us to instantly combat people’s issues about recycling and provide them with the information they need.”
Missed targets
Hammersmith & Fulham recycled 15.3% in 2003/04, just short of its 16% target. A spokeswoman for London Remade said: “The council introduced the collection system six months after Wandsworth and if they had been running for a whole year they would have met their target.”
Lambeth recycled 11% of household waste in 2003/04, missing its 14% target, but only introduced the orange sacks early this year. It is now working towards its 2005/06 target of 21%.
Kensington & Chelsea, which opted not to follow the other boroughs in using the weekly orange sack system, missed its 22% household recycling target for 2003/04 by 5.6 percentage points. The London Remade spokeswoman said the borough is now working with the Western Riverside waste awareness campaign to improve communications and has now switched its twice weekly kerbside collections to using orange bags.
The combination of the orange sack schemes, continued communication programmes and the roll out of recycling schemes to high and medium rise buildings means the four WRWA boroughs should meet their 2005/06 targets, the spokeswoman said. “They are working now not only on kerbside collections but also on their estates and bring sites as well. It should make quite a difference.”
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