Recycling officers are due to begin ‘knocking on doors’ in the city this month, as part of a £900,000 project aimed at boosting Oxford’s overall recycling rate by 2% by March 2017.
The first phase of the project, which started in April this year, saw the council roll out 500 litre and 240 litre red communal food waste containers to all council-owned flats in the city.
The council has also supplied each flat with a seven litre food caddy, a roll of compostable bin liners, and educational leaflets, with the aim helping residents recycle an extra 300 tonnes of food waste per year.
‘Face-to-face’
The second phase of the project will see the council aim to reach over 50% of residents through a ‘face-to-face’ educational door knocking exercise – as well as putting more pressure on private landlords to increase the take-up of recycling in rented flats.
Tensions between the council and landlords in Oxford escalated over the summer, after the authority warned that they would only remove a volume of landfill waste equal to that of the recycling material presented for collection (see letsrecycle.com story).
The equal bins policy was branded ‘strange’ and ‘unfair’ by the National Landlords Association, arguing it was the council’s responsibility to provide the same number of communal recycling containers as refuse bins, and that landlords should not be penalised for failure to do so.
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Educational
In the first year of the project, recycling officers aim to carry out 6,500 educational visits to both private residents and council tenants. The education will take the form of leaflets, fridge magnets and other printed information.
A dedicated specialist food collection vehicle has been purchased to carry out weekly collections of all food waste from both private and council-owned flat sites.
Councillor John Tanner, board member for a cleaner, greener Oxford, said: “We will provide all flats in Oxford with weekly food waste collections just as we have for all family houses in the city.
“Tonnes of food are sent to landfill in Oxford every year, where it creates damaging methane. Now more households will be able to recycle their discarded food, which will help the environment and produce compost and electricity.”
Recycling
Oxford city council currently recycles around 45% of its waste, and has initiated several new drives to boost its rate above the 50% required by 2020. In June, the council ruled that street food vendors must provide biodegradable or recyclable take-away food packaging for customers.
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