At a cabinet meeting yesterday (June 29), councillors approved the plans to move from an alternate weekly collection system for residual waste, to a new schedule that will see the introduction of a weekly food waste collection, with residual waste moving to a three weekly service.
The plans will also see recyclable waste, which is collected from households in 240 litre green and blue wheeled bins (green for plastics, cans, tins, foil and glass, and blue for paper and card) – move from a fortnightly to a three weekly service.
Councillors have also approved plans to procure 23-litre food waste caddies for households currently not covered by the authority’s combined food and garden waste service. For households that receive the combined food and green waste collections, this will move from a fortnightly to a weekly schedule.
Residents are to be given their say on the implementation of the plans, with a public consultation on the proposals to be held this year. Rochdale council believes that the proposed new system will help to increase its recycling rate from the 32.9% recorded in 2013/14.
Costs
The council states that it currently pays £306.62 a tonne for the general waste it collects from dark green bins and it claims that if it does not increase its recycling rate and reduce the amount of general waste it produces, the total cost of waste disposal could increase by as much as £2 million by 2016/17.
No timetable has yet been set for when the revised schedule will take effect.
Councillor Jacqui Beswick, cabinet member for environment, said: “The borough is currently one of the lower performing boroughs in Greater Manchester; recycling around 34.5%. We need to increase the recycling rate to 45% by March 2017 to achieve the annual £1 million saving; helping to ease the saving requirements of other essential public services.
“The council needs to make big savings over the next two years which means we need to do things differently. This proposed change in service will enable us to recycle more by providing a borough wide food collection service, while at the same time reduce disposal cost.”
Bury
In moving to a three weekly residual waste collection service, Rochdale would be mirroring its neighbour Bury, which became the first local authority in England to collect residual waste once every three weeks, making the switch in October 2014.
In March the council reported that monitoring the first five months of the system had seen around 2,450 tonnes less residual waste collected than compared to the same period 12 months earlier, with recycling rates having jumped by around 5% for some months.
East Devon
Elsewhere in England, East Devon council has begun assessing the viability of a three weekly residual service, with a trial for around 1,800 households to move from the currently fortnightly system in September.
The council is carrying out the trials to help prepare for the appointment of a new recycling and waste contractor in 2016. Feedback from the trial will help the council make a decision on any future changes to the current recycling and waste service for the whole district.
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