News in Brief

Hull city council has sold 5150 compost bins in the first year of its three year home composting campaign.

The council originally budgeted for 4,000 Straight Recycling bins in the first year but realised after the first sale day that they would need more. Hull council received over 80,000 from Waste Recycling Environmental for the subsidised bins and promotion of the scheme. The compost bins, normally selling at 30 and 40 were reduced to just 7 for a 280 litre bin and 5 for a 220 litre bin.

Doug Sharp, recycling and education officer at the council, said: “We have been pleasantly surprised at the response to the scheme. Hull is a very tight-knit city. There are not very many gardens, or very few large gardens at least.”

But he said that despite the lack of space, garden waste make a major contribution to Hull's 130,000 tonnes of waste each year. “Garden waste makes up the second largest fraction of the average Hull wheelie bin with over 20% or 25,000 tonnes potentially compostable,” said Mr Sharp, “By offering compost bins at such an excellent price, we hope to encourage more and more people to help target this reusable material.”

Hull has also received a grant from DEFRA to expand its kerbside collections to 60,000 households and the council plans to build seven new household waste recycling centres.

Surrey Waste Management (SWM) has been working with Surrey county council to encourage residents to reduce junk mail.

SWM and the council have been addressing the problem of unwanted mail through a promotional campaign encouraging residents to sign up to the Mailing Preference Service (MPS). There has been an additional 6,000 people signing up to the campaign since it was launched in April.

Jane Gunn, project coordinator at SWM, said: “This is a brilliant response. Already over 62,000 people in Surrey have applied. I urge everyone in the county who doesn't want to receive unwanted mail to send in a form to the MPS to save filling up our landfill sites with paper waste.”

The campaign has been strengthened by a voluntary agreement was signed between the Direct Mail Association and the government last week. It set the direct mail industry the goal to recycle 30% of junk mail by the end of 2005 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Trafford council has placed special collection skips in the town to collect the 2002-03 edition of the Yellow Pages for recycling.

The 2003-04 edition of the telephone directory will be delivered across the area over the next couple of weeks. The two dedicated skips will be available between August 9 to October 31, 2003 and the collected Yellow Pages will be taken to Blackburns Waste Disposal to be recycled into cardboard packaging.

Joyce Acton, executive member for waste management, said: “Last year, Trafford residents recycled over seven and a half tonnes of Yellow Pages using specially placed skips, which was very encouraging. We hope to better that figure this year and save many more Yellow Pages from landfill.”

Yell, who publish Yellow Pages, has been providing funding to local authorities to recycle the telephone directories since 1995 and over 80% of local authorities offer Yellow Pages recycling. A survey carried out by Yell in 2003 found that 46% of people recycled their Yellow Pages.