Devon looks to scrap recycling credits for textiles

The council is consulting on a range of measures to cut costs from its waste and recycling services, as it seeks to slash £265,000 per year from its budget.

A consultation launched last week (October 9) also includes the introduction of a £3.50 per item charge for using household waste recycling centres to dispose of materials such as UPVC windows, baths or insulation materials.

Devon paid a total of £65,500 through its recycling credits scheme for the 1,192 tonnes of textiles from textile banks and civic amenity sites in 2013 to ‘registered third parties’, to encourage them to collect textiles which had been deposited by householders.

The credit scheme sees payments made to business or charity organisations based on the anticipated avoided costs of collection and disposal of the material.

However, it claims that this is no longer necessary as the materials are likely to attract as much as £350 per tonne once – around £400,000 for all of the material handled by the council in 2013 – once they are resold in the market.

Incentive

The council believes that were it to take the payment away, the value of the material would continue to act as an incentive for the material to be collected. A similar incentive run by neighbouring Torbay council for textiles was ended in 2011. Devon is due to continue offering credits for paper, glass and plastics recycling.

Councillor Roger Croad, Devon’s cabinet member for environment services, said: “These changes mean we won’t spend tax payers’ money offering an incentive for people to recycle textiles, when given its high market value, it is likely those groups registered with us to receive the recycling credits would continue to collect it anyway without payment from us as they can make far in excess of the money we are offering elsewhere.”

The charge for the disposal of waste materials from household repairs has been proposed as the council is seeking to reduce the cost it incurs when handling and disposing of the material. Other household waste items such as furniture, garden waste and WEEE will continue to be accepted free of charge.

Charge

Charges also apply for the disposal of non-household items including soil and rubble, plasterboard, asbestos and tyres. The rates for these items are being reviewed as part of the suggested changes.

Councillor Croad added: “Although we have a legal obligation to provide recycling centres for household waste to be accepted free of charge, this does not include waste from DIY house improvements, and the cost of disposing of this sort of waste cannot be sustained in light of the council’s reduced budgets.

“We don’t want to stop accepting these types of waste as we recognise that residents need somewhere to dispose of such items. However, we feel introducing a small charge to cover the cost of handling this sort of waste is a fair compromise.”

The consultation on the proposed changes is due to close on November 19.