The BREW Centre for Local Authorities – which provides support for councils to help businesses be more resource efficient – has published results from its annual trade waste survey showing that 236 (or 60%) of the 394 councils in the country were providing trade waste services in February 2009 – up from 230 in February 2008.
The findings come despite concerns expressed at a meeting of the government's Waste Strategy Board in January that many councils were unwilling to expand their trade waste services due to fears over exceeding their landfill allowances.
The BREW Centre – which is a consortium involving Oxfordshire county council, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme and the Local Government Association – is now collecting examples of successful recycling schemes and disseminating these to other councils, and has produced a guidance note and toolkit to help local authorities price their service effectively.
Successful schemes include that operated by Carrick district council in partnership with a private contractor, which collects and recycles paper, cardboard, cans and plastic bottles from around 320 local firms.
Oxfordshire county council has also worked with its waste contractor W& S Recycling to provide a bring facility for trade waste and recycling just outside the centre of Oxford. At the centre, recycling costs 50% (£35/tonne) of the cost of disposal (£60/tonne) and businesses can recycle cardboard, green waste, timber, metals and rubble. The scheme has worked so well that the site may now be expanded to increase capacity.
The BREW Centre said: “The research achieved a 100% response rate. The BREW Centre will repeat the survey again in 2010 to monitor the developments in the provision of local authority services.”
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