Municipal services contractor Verdant, which handles recycling, waste management and street cleansing for Melton borough council, says it has nearly trebled recycling tonnage as a proportion of overall waste collected in the trial area, increasing it from 21% in March to 59% at the end of June.
The figures have been “diligently compiled” by the company, said development director Roger Edwards, who explained that a big factor in reaching the 59% figure has been the inclusion of green waste in the collection – without this the dry recyclables figure would be 38%.
As a result of the increase, said Mr Edwards, a net 24 tonnes of potential waste were diverted from landfill. He said that this one per cent reduction in landfill volume “bucked the usual national trend for waste volumes to increase by up to 2.5% during the initial stages of a wheeled bin-based refuse scheme.”
In March 2004, the month before the trial began, a total of 64.48 tonnes of recyclable materials (54.42 tonnes of ‘dry’ items, such as paper, card, glass, cans, plastics and textiles, and 10.06 tonnes of green garden waste) were collected for recycling. This accounted for around 21% of the overall 301 tonnes of waste and recyclable materials collected that month.
In June, 312 tonnes of recyclable materials (78.04 tonnes of dry items and 234.99 tonnes of garden waste) were collected for recycling. This represented 59% of the overall 524 tonnes of waste and recyclable materials collected in the month.
Detailed survey work was undertaken by Verdant to measure the effect of the wheeled bin trial on the public’s recycling habits. The results show that participation in the test area had increased from 50% to 70% by the end of June, “confirming Verdant’s belief that the public will support new initiatives provided they are well managed”.
Fortnightly
Verdant began its six month trial of a new wheeled bin scheme with around 6,500 urban and rural properties, a third of Melton’s total, in April this year. Residents in the trial area, who, like all other residents, had been issued with two recycling boxes 18 months earlier, were provided with two wheeled bins. One wheeled bin was allocated for normal waste, the second for garden waste, with each being collected on alternate weeks on a fortnightly cycle. Recycling box contents are collected weekly, using dedicated vehicles with separate compartments for different materials.
Side waste has been banned from the fortnightly residual collection although this has caused some controversy locally.
Mr Edwards added: “Once people understand the scheme, how it works and its benefits, they do support it. The initial challenge is to educate them to segregate recyclable materials efficiently. Feedback shows they also like seeing their recycled materials being segregated on collection by our specialist vehicles.”
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