Glass scheme to push Kirklees recycling “up by a third”

A pilot scheme is to be expanded over the next two years, including the monthly glass collections using green boxes, and giving the district's 12,000 rural homes access to kerbside recycling for the first time.

” Recycling has never been easier in Kirklees and in the next three years it will become even easier. “
– Cllr Martyn Bolt, Kirklees MBC
The scheme will also see the whole borough switching to alternate-weekly collections of dry recyclables and residual waste, using green and grey bins.

Cllr Martyn Bolt, Cabinet member for the environment, said: “These two initiatives, together with increasing the frequency of current green bin collections for everyone else, are geared to boost overall household waste recycling by one third – taking it from 21% to 28%.

“Recycling has never been easier in Kirklees and in the next three years it will become even easier due to a new recycling plan. On average every person throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks,” he added.

Rolling out the new programme will begin in June in the north of the district, with households sent information packs as well as their green boxes for glass bottles and jars.

The expanded recycling services will help the council meet its government waste targets, while also meeting the terms of the Household Waste Recycling Act, which requires all local authorities in England to provide kerbside collections for at least two recyclable materials by 2010.

Kirklees will ban garden waste from residual waste bins as it offers the green waste collection service and also actively promotes home composting across the district.

Glass
Around 644,000 from Defra's Waste Performance & Efficiency Grant is to be used to part-fund the costs of new glass collection vehicles and boxes, with the new glass collections then requiring around 724,000 a year to run.

Cllr Bolt explained: “In 2004 glass collections were set up as a trial for 5,500 properties in the Denby Dale area. Following the success of this trial the scheme was expanded to include 22,000 properties in 2005 and 45,000 properties in 2006. Over 800 tonnes of glass was collected through this scheme last year. This is the equivalent of two million glass bottles and jars.

“The amount of glass recycled through glass banks in the trial areas has also continued to rise and over 3,200 tonnes of glass or eight million glass bottles and jars were collected in Kirklees last year,” Cllr Bolt added.

The council's pilot scheme saw homes taking part reducing their residual waste from 63 tonnes per week to 45 tonnes per week, while recycling tonnages increased from nine tonnes per week to 20 tonnes including glass.

In a survey towards the end of 2006, nearly two in three households on the pilot scheme said it had been easy to adapt to the new arrangements including the move to fortnightly, rather than weekly, residual waste collections.