The 275,000 SITA Environmental Trust funded study – run by ECT Recycling and Bath and North East Somerset Council, over a two year period – aimed to evaluate the best way of collecting garden and kitchen waste from homes.
Understandably, the study found that a free service was more popular. Where a charge was made, there was a participation rate of just 10%, with the average home producing 25kg of green waste per year. For the houses that weren't charged, 71% participated, producing around 263kg per year.
But study also raised concerns that not charging for participating in the schemes generated more waste.
The extra waste is thought to arise as a result of more people being encouraged to garden, knowing the council will get rid of their waste for free and the decline in home bonfires and composting, for the same reason. The study also suggested that having the green waste collected for free discourages people from taking it to CA sites.
Andy Bond, managing director of ECT, who run waste collection services in the West Country suggested that a compromise price where people would recycle green waste instead of binning it, but not generate more, needed to be found:
“These findings clearly pose a quandary for councils. If local authorities want to meet their recycling targets, then the collection of garden waste cannot be ignored. But if this is done for free, you can end up just encouraging the generation of even more rubbish.”
“Dealing with garden waste costs money, so the sector will have to find a middle ground where the collection of garden waste is charged for but at a price residents find acceptable.”
It also made a number of best practice suggestions for councils, with findings suggesting that collecting kitchen waste on a weekly basis is more effective than fortnightly and that all-year-round services are more popular than those run on a seasonal basis.
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