Exceptional recycling rates achieved at Somerset centres

The council revealed that its 18 centres – run by Viridor Waste Management since the company acquired Wyvern Waste earlier this year – have recycled up to 82% of material in some parts of the county, with an average rate of 72%.

Somerset's award-winning Highbridge recycling centre achieved an 81.4% recycling rate last year

Somerset, which won CA Site of the Year in last year's Awards for Excellence for the Highbridge site, is attributing the continued success to a 4.4 million improvement plan.

An incentive-led contract with Viridor has also helped to boost rates in the last year. (see letsrecycle.com story).

Dan Cooke, external affairs manager for Viridor, told letsrecycle.com: “By increasing the recycling options for the public, and ensuring that no commercial waste is illegally being deposited at the centres, we are seeing great performance levels at the sites that we are all really pleased about.”

CCTV
Among recent moves, CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition Systems have been introduced at larger sites in Somerset. This has reduced illegal dumping, which has resulted in waste tonnage reducing and recycling increasing.

The CCTV system, which was first introduce at a recycling site in Yeovil, saw the amount of waste brought into the centres dropping by 10% between 2004/05 and 2005/06, while recycling increased by 8%.

The findings suggest that cameras have encouraged residents to separate the waste, and discouraged illegal dumping.

A council spokesman said: “Because we saw a reduction in tonnage, but an increase in recycling, we installed cameras at all our centres. We have also improved overall public awareness of sites and the need to separate materials.”

“We're not sure anyone is doing better,” the Somerset spokesman added.

• This year's Awards for Excellence in Recycling and Waste Management takes place at London's Savoy Hotel on October 12. The shortlist for this year's CA Site of the Year includes sites in Edinburgh, Hull and Leicestershire. For the full shortlist for all nine categories, see this letsrecycle.com story.