The new recycling and waste service, launched by the council in February has seen grey bin residual waste collection move from a fortnightly to a three-weekly schedule.
Exmouth – which has 16,700 of the borough’s 68,000 households – is in the first phase of a two-phase roll out of the new service which will be introduced to the rest of the East Devon district in June 2017.
The council also claims that the householders have access to a more comprehensive weekly recycling service, as cardboard, mixed plastics and Tetra Paks will be collected alongside the existing range of items that can be recycled, including glass, plastic bottles, cans and paper.
Collection
Food waste is also collected on a weekly basis, whilst the council has partnered with a not-for-proift organisation, Otter Rotters, to offer a pay-per-use garden waste collection service.
According to the council, provisional findings show that since the service was launched in Exmouth, recycling and composting rates in the town has risen from 44%, to 59% in the first six weeks of the new scheme.
Contractor Suez, which was awarded a seven-year waste and recycling collection contract with East Devon in March 2016 (see letsrecycle.com story) is now collecting, on average, around 90 tonnes of dry recycling from the town every week, the council has said. An increase of more than 24 tonnes.
MRF
Recyclables from East Devon are sent to a materials recycling facility (MRF) operated by Suez at the Greendale Business Park near Exeter.
Cllr Paul Diviani, leader of East Devon district council, said: “The residents of Exmouth have really embraced the new service in such a short time and we are very grateful to them. We have worked hard prior to the introduction of the service to ensure that households had all the information they needed to make the new scheme work and this has certainly paid off when you look at the results.
“We are now turning our attention to rolling out the service to the rest of East Devon and we will be contacting households by post over the coming weeks to keep them informed of the changes.”
Cllr Diviani added: “We have changed the service for the better because our residents have been asking us to help them recycle more and waste less for some time now. Environmentally, the service fits the bill too as one of our key council priorities is to protect the beautiful area where we live.”
East Devon is one of a growing number of councils in England to have moved towards a three-weekly residual collection cycle in recent years. Among those to have pioneered the reduced frequency collection regime were Bury, which introduced the system in October 2014.
Councils in Wales and Scotland have also looked to three-weekly residual waste collections as a method of boosting recycling, with Gwynedd and Fife among those to look towards a reduced residual regime.
Critics of reduced frequency waste collection systems have questioned whether this method leads to higher dry recycling contamination rates.
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