Somerset to introduce plastics and card collections

The Partnership, which manages waste and recycling for the county council and five district and borough councils, plans to roll-out the ‘Sort-It Plus' service to Sedgemoor district council and Taunton Deane borough council over the next two years. The service will see residents issued an extra recycling box for the new materials.

Collections are set to take place on the same day as the existing, source separated, weekly dry recyclable collection service for paper, glass bottles and jars and aluminium cans and will be carried out by a new vehicle designed to cater for the addition of the new and existing dry recyclable materials as well as food waste.

The decision to roll out the new service over the next two years follows successful trials which looked at several different collection options in Sedgemoor, Taunton Deane and Mendip district council between May and September 2008.

Earlier this month (July 2 and July 15), Sedgemoor and Taunton Deane approved plans to adopt the service following the end of the trial and the service is expected to be rolled out across Somerset over the next few years. However, Mendip has since chosen not to add the extra materials due to its own budgetary reasons.

The extra kerbside containers will be funded by Somerset county council, which is providing up to £1.8 million in capital costs to support the roll-out. The money is supplied by Defra under the Waste Infrastructure Grant.

Vehicles

The trial found that it was feasible to add plastic and cardboard but the most cost-effective measure would be to collect it weekly in a ‘single-pass', kerbside-sorting vehicle.

David Mansell, strategy and communications manager at SWP, said: “We found the highest performing and best value for money option was to provide weekly recycling collections using May Gurney's new single pass collection vehicle. 87% of residents said these collections were better than previous arrangements and we achieved recycling rates up to 58%.

“The new single pass collection vehicle developed by our contractor May Gurney has many innovative features. Loading capacity is maximised through low-level stillages and internal mechanisms to lift bulky plastic bottles and cardboard to an upper storage level.

“There is no stepping up on to the vehicle as all materials can be safely loaded from either side directly into separate compartments,” he added.

However, Mr Mansell said that the SWP had no plans to expand the collections even further to allow a free, green waste collection.

He said: “Even higher recycling rates would arise if we provided free garden waste collections, but SWP believes it is much better, both financially and environmentally, to charge for garden waste and promote home composting.”