The unitary authority is currently celebrating the five-year anniversary of its Private Finance Initiative contract, which has seen recycling rates increase from 6% to 32% since July 2000.
 South Gloucestershire's “SORT IT” alternate-weekly collection scheme has helped achieve a 32% recycling rate in 2004/05 |
The key to the recycling success of the contract has been introducing new fortnightly kerbside recycling services, which was upgraded last year to a full alternate-weekly refuse and recycling collection system, dubbed “SORT IT”.
The service sees residual waste collected in black wheeled bins one week, with garden waste and cardboard collected in green wheeled bins – along with recycling boxes for dry recyclables – on the alternate week.
Next step
The next step for the contract looks to be increasing the amount of biodegradable household waste that is composted. Householders currently have their green waste collected every alternate week in green wheeled bins, but the next stage could see food waste collections from 2007.
Yvonne Pearce, the council's waste management manager, said: “Analysis of the contents of the black wheeled bins showed that around 50% was compostable waste, so we knew there was plenty of scope to increase composting.”
Of the 32% recycling and composting rate achieved in 2004/05 in South Gloucestershire, 15.2 percentage points was green waste composting. Hopes are a new in-vessel composting plant could be in place in spring 2007.
Under animal by-product regulations, the collection of food waste requires in-vessel treatment plants to process the material to a certain standard, cutting out potential contamination.
With such a plant in place, council officers and SITA believe the authority will be able to meet its landfill diversion targets under the government's Landfill Allowances Trading Scheme until middle of 2009.
Strategy
For the period after 2009, the council is working with neighbouring authorities including fellow unitary councils Bristol city and Bath & North East Somerset to draw up a joint municipal waste management strategy.
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Ms Pearce said: “South Gloucestershire council is working collaboratively with three local authorities in the west of England, and SITA to develop a joint waste strategy for diverting waste from landfill from 2009 and beyond.
“The authorities have successfully attracted waste implementation funding for a consultancy project which is currently in progress. This will determine the type and capacity of treatment facilities needed for the future,” Ms Pearce explained.
Letsrecycle.com is holding a special conference on how to achieve success with alternate weekly collection systems on September 21. For more details see the letsrecycle.com events page
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