Cherwell District Council provided all 55,000 homes in the area with blue boxes for newspaper and magazine recycling in December 2001 – but just 40% of residents are taking advantage of the service.
The figure is even lower in the north of the district, where just 37% of villagers take part, but even in the best area – Kidlington, with a rate of 48% – more than half the householders do not take part.
The council blamed the poor participation on confusion over collection dates caused by the fortnightly collections. Recycling officer Alison McHugh said: “We think some people don't know when their next collections are. The solution is down to publicity and getting people to know when their recycling day is. We are looking at giving people more information on the dates when their collections are due.”
But Ms McHugh dismissed the idea of making collections weekly. “We considered weekly collections when we first introduced the schemes, but after looking at other councils' figures, we decided that it wasn't worth the extra expense,” she said. “You only get about an increase of 10-15% on weekly tonnages so we decided it was better to do it fortnightly.”
Cherwell also operates bring banks for glass, cans and textiles and is planning to trial plastics banks at the start of 2003. Ms McHugh said she was confident the council would meet its recycling targets for 2003/04 without kerbside collections of any other materials.
An average of 80 tonnes paper a week were collected from households over August and September 2002. The material is recycled by Aylesford Newsprint in Kent.
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