From Monday (November 16), the West London council is to offer household collections of mixed dry recyclables from properties such as blocks of between 13 and 24 flats, flats above shops and properties on ‘red routes' such as major roads in urban areas.
The move comes after council, which achieved a 35.09% household waste recycling and composting rate in 2008/09, ran a trial of the scheme between November 2007 and July 2009 with 1,000 properties and found it yielded an additional 84 tonnes of recyclable material.
At the same time, the council is also going to increase the provision of communal recycling facilities for larger blocks of flats. The London borough currently provides communal bins for 16,000 properties but this will increase by a further 5,000 from the start of next week.
The council will also supply households using the communal schemes – where they can recycle paper, cans and glass – with a reusable bag to make it easier to carry items to the new bins.
Councillor Sue Emment, cabinet member for environment and street services, said: “Our recycling rates have rocketed over the last two years since our £3.8million investment into same day refuse and recycling collections.
“We have put in a lot of hard work to make sure the service runs as smoothly as possible but as with the introduction of any new service, I would ask people to be patient at first.”
Ealing explained that it would not be expanding the household collection service to its larger blocks of flats due to issues surrounding access and fire safety.
Cost
A report submitted to Ealing council's cabinet in September 2009 reveals that introducing the scheme is set to cost Ealing an initial one-off investment of £256,000, which is set to be drawn from the Ealing Civic Improvement Fund. And, it is set to cost the council £327,000-a-year to run the collection.
The costs are to cover a range of elements of the service, such as the small recycling compaction vehicle being used to service mixed recycling collections from ‘hard to access' properties, including Saturday collections from properties on red routes.
In addition, the money will go towards the purchase and delivery of free, single-use clear mixed recycling sacks to all properties on a quarterly basis and the introduction of an ‘estates' vehicle to service the expansion of the communal flats facilities from both private and Ealing Homes-managed blocks.
The cost of the additional communal facilities themselves will also be covered, as well as the purchase and delivery of free, re-usable recycling storage bags to all flats and households eligible for communal recycling services.
Funding will also extend to a programme of communications to help maximise participation in both services, including a flats recycling officer.
Recycling from flats has historically been problematic for councils due to issues relating to access and safety. In June this year, WRAP unveiled an online tool aimed at helping councils to devise, implement and run flats recycling initiatives (see letsrecycle.com story).
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