Working with market development group ReMaDe Kent & Medway as well as Brett Waste Management, the county council plans to operate the scheme as a pilot for nine months. The scheme will collect plastic bottles at sites in Ashford, Canterbury, Deal, Dover, Folkestone and Sandwich.
 Launching the scheme in Canterbury, Kent's waste contracts manager Peter Horn (left) and Diana Lock of ReMaDe Kent & Medway join Cllr Richard King. |
Richard King, county council cabinet member for the environment and transport, said: “This is an important first step. If the pilot is successful I hope we shall be able to expand the scheme throughout Kent.”
The pilot scheme has been designed to test the market for plastic bottles and the viability of collecting them at household waste recycling sites. JFC Delleve of Stratford-upon-Avon will take the bottles from the trial for recycling into drainpipes and other construction products.
ReMaDe programme manager Diana Lock said that around 7% of Kent's household waste is plastics, of which almost half is plastic bottles.
“The arrival of new technology to recycle plastics, combined with commercial application for the remanufacture of plastics, means that we are now able, for the first time, to trial the recycling of this household waste in Kent,” said Ms Lock.
This service is in addition to the kerbside recycling collections by five out of 12 Kent district councils that include plastic bottles. These bottles are sorted at Brett Waste Management's material recycling facility at Hersden near Canterbury.
In 2002/03 Kent county council achieved a recycling rate of 19.66% and an average recycling rate at its household waste recycling sites in excess of 56%.
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