North-east trio develop barcoded kerbside scheme

The three district councils are working with Foreman Recycling and Groundworks to replace their previous kerbside collection which used supermarket plastic bags to collect the materials. Collectively, they received 700,000 from DEFRA's 140 million fund which they have spent on the boxes, new collection vehicles and the barcoding system.

Eric Bell, recycling officer at Derwentside district council, said: “The barcoding system is to collect data on participation rates. We are just in the process of updating the system for all the households. Eventually, we will have a website where the public will have access to the data. I'm told it’s the biggest barcoding scheme in the country, with 80,000 participants in total.”

The boxes and barcoding system came from Straight. The council designed the new collection vehicles with a lower chassis to help overcome problems the crews were facing in reaching the cages. The lower chassis were supplied by Iveco and the vehicles were built locally in Newcastle by Dependable Bodies.

Derwentside district council has 37,000 households of the total 80,000 in the kerbside scheme. For April and May, Derwentside alone collected 750 tonnes each month through its new green box kerbside collection, which is a 20% increase on the previous scheme. This breaks down to 614 tonnes of paper and card, 15 tonnes of mixed card, 100 tonnes of glass and 21 tonnes of textiles.

Capacity
The mixed material collections are taken to Foreman Recycling's material recycling facility (MRF) in Spennymoor, County Durham. The MRF has a capacity of 1,500 to 2,000 tonnes per month. Also working with the council is Groundworks, an environmental trust that operates in the north of England and specialises in educating schoolchildren about waste and recycling.

Mr Bell said of the box scheme: “Early indications are that it will be a success.”

In March, the scheme added empty aerosol cans to the collections. Combined with the introduction of the green box scheme the average tonnage of mixed cans has doubled since the inclusion of aerosols.

Derwentside's recycling rate for 2002-03 was 9.1%, for Wear Valley it was 4.5% and Teesdale 4.4%. Derwentside's recycling target for 2003-04 is 13%.