Derby addresses recycling crisis in its inner city

The two-year project, Creating a Cleaner and Greener Normanton, is being launched tomorrow by the council and is being run in partnership with the University of Derby, the Environment Agency and the Tidy Britain Group. The 82,000 project is being funded by Onyx Environmental Trust through the landfill tax credit scheme.

The council hopes that the initiative will raise awareness about recycling and change attitudes towards waste in its inner-city area. The project should help to increase the city’s current 12.2% recycling rate.

Normanton is the worst area in the city for recycling with only 5% of residents putting out paper for collection. This compares with over 50% in other parts of the city.

Richard Winter, recycling officer for Derby City Council, said: “We have a big dumping problem in Normanton and the street cleansing service is the most expensive in the city.”

He added: “The area consists of 43% ethnic minorities and for a large number of residents English is not their first language. We have already asked some people if they know about recycling and they look at us blankly. Often the leaflets are in English which many people can’t understand. Some people can’t read at all and if this is the case, it is very difficult to sell recycling to them.”

Talking

A project officer has been appointed to find out what residents in the area think about recycling. And, the programme will involve a lot of door knocking and talking to people to educate them about recycling.

The initiative will also look at designing recycling schemes more closely around residents’ lifestyles so that recycling is made as easy as possible. The scheme will encourage residents to use recycling facilities by improving the condition of banks in the city. Residents will also be told what happens “beyond the bank” as they will be shown what waste can be recycled into.

Mr Winter said: “We want to find out what people need to help them recycle and hopefully the council will be able to provide a solution. We hope the results will be used by other councils.”

Any initiatives that the council carries out as a result of the consultation exercise are likely to be in response to Normanton’s unique waste compostion. A recent analysis found that 32% of the waste stream was made of kitchen compostibles and that there was very little plastic – 2% compared with 8% in other areas.