The council has for many years organised regular collections of bulky household waste which were then sent to dumps, but it decided for the first time last year to trial a re-use system. “Charities in one vehicle followed the pick-up truck and cherry-picked what they wanted,” explained the spokesman.
The trial was run in 11 blocks of around 1,000 households each between June 2001 and March 2002. “The focus was on the big items and we made an event of it, collecting things refuse lorries wouldn’t pick up if you put them outside your bin,” he elaborated. Most of the items re-used were pieces of furniture.
The council believes the rate of re-use in the pilot justifies a full launch over the next year covering 31 different blocks of around 1,000 households each. Householders will not need to pay for the items to be picked up if they wait for the collection day. “It encourages them to store the goods up for the collection,” explained the spokesman. The alternative is a chargeable ad hoc service involving an appointment made by the householder with the council to pick up the waste.
Temporary
Oldham also experimented with putting up temporary recycling banks for glass, as there are not enough permanent bottle banks per 1,000 households at the moment. However, this experiment was not successful and will not be repeated for the time being, as householders were not taking sufficient volumes of glass to the temporary banks.
Explaining some of the thinking behind the initiative, Councillor Howard Sykes said: “In five years time there will be no landfill sites left in the country so it is essential that local people start now to recycle and re-use rather than dump. We have developed the traditional kerbside collection scheme because it is more environmentally friendly.”
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