The best value inspectors concluded that the council provides a fair one star service for waste collection and recycling. This is because the service meets its overall aims, has an improving recycling rate and because user satisfaction is above average. But although the inspectors concluded that the service will improve they identified a number of weaknesses.
West Oxfordshire District Council currently has a recycling rate of 8.2% but this shows that the council has failed to reach its own target of 20%. The report stated: “It is clear
that when the decision was made to adopt the recycling plan
targets, no consideration was given to the feasibility of achieving
them given the council’s starting position.”
The inspectors said that the council needs to adopt challenging revised targets in the light of the national waste strategy. Government targets for the council are 10% recycling and composting by 2003/04 and 18% 2005/6. And that it needs to concentrate on reducing waste arisings to the Oxfordshire district average within a period of three years and increase recycling to reach the best 25% by the end of five years. The council spent 341,700 on recycling last year and 490,200 this year.
The inspectors also said that more attention needs to be placed on analysing the generation of waste, waste streams and recycling participation, including geographic and spatial variations. “We found that the need for data to assess participation rates and effectiveness of recycling had not been recognised.”
To increase recycling and waste minimisation, the inspectors concluded that there needs to be better provision of information and the council needs to find out what works, where and why and should talk with the local community. There should also be closer liaison with Oxfordshire County Council – the waste disposal authority. While communication between the council and ECT recycling, the company responsible for the kerbside and bring site recycling, was considered to be good, communication could be improved with Cleanaway.
The inspectors said that to hit government targets the council needs to make recycling easy for residents and that they should widen the range of recyclables collected to include green waste, cardboard and plastic. Other measures include the encouragement of home composting and the introduction better signposting at bring sites.
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