The London Remade-organised debate, Kerbside Collection – Understanding the Options’ held at the City Hall in London, saw Andy Bond, managing director of ECT Recycling, speaking in support of sorting materials at the kerbside.
Canadian expert Derek Stephenson, who has experience in the field stretching back to 1974, spoke in favour of single stream systems involving co-mingled materials reclamation facilities (MRFs).
Participation
While outlining the strengths of each system, both speakers agreed that the biggest issue local authorities had to address in running kerbside systems was getting the public on board.
Mr Bond said that for councils to get significant amounts of material from kerbside systems in order to reach their targets, they would have to maximise the capture rate, getting as many householders to participate as possible.
“You need capture rate of about 80% to get enough materials to reach a recycling rate of 25%,” Mr Bond said. “The capture rate in London systems is about 40% – 50%. Participation rates and capture rates are dependent on educating householders – and that's for both kinds of kerbside system.”
Mr Stephenson agreed that this was bigger issue than whether to opt for a multi-stream or single-stream approach.
“Whether you ask householders to separate into one box or five, the important thing is they are separating the waste, their behaviour is changing,” he said.
Multi-stream
The strengths of the multi-stream approach to kerbside collections, which involve householders sorting materials into separate bags or boxes to be collected on multi-compartment vehicles, were its low cost, low technology and speed of implementation according to Mr Bond.
He also said the flexibility of the system and quality of material collected added to the effectiveness of kerbside sorting. Mr Bond's organisation, ECT Recycling, provides kerbside collection services for around one in five households in London, using the multi-stream approach.
“The market is saying it likes our material because of its quality. MRF material is not clean enough,” Mr Bond said. “We have a positive system – we get money for our material, there's no gate fee. The price per tonne of our system is lower than using MRFs taking account of net cost. It's not possible to get any lower cost than this.”
He added: “Why is it that we are getting MRFs built at all? It's about politics. Politicians feel they have to spend money somewhere, so they go for a MRF. Then when the MRF is there, it may be cheaper. But you have to pay for it in the first place.”
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