Speaking to letsrecycle.com yesterday, England's largest individual local authority said that it was already ahead of its statutory recycling targets of 20% for 2007/08.
” We were exceeding a 20% recycling rate by last Autumn and are confident we will exceed that this year. “
– Jeremy Shields, Birmingham city council
The revelation follows the introduction of an enhanced recycling service, as laid down in Birmingham's waste management strategy for 2006-2026.
Published last November, the strategy aimed to see recycling in Birmingham double from its 2005/06 level of 17% by 2012 through a range of initiatives ranging from green waste collections to real nappy promotion.
Birmingham's fleet and waste management officer Jeremy Shields, said: “Recycling rates have already increased significantly since the introduction of the waste strategy. We were exceeding a 20% recycling rate by last Autumn and are confident we will exceed that this year.”
Kerbside collections
In Birmingham, the city council's in-house collection service has provided paper recycling collections to most households for several years. However, kerbside collections of glass, cans and plastic were only rolled out to a pilot of 100,000 households last Autumn and green waste collections are currently being increased from a monthly to a fortnightly service.
Other initiatives which have helped to increase recycling over the last six months include a recycling programme in schools and flats and enhanced recycling promotion.
This has been improved by a 295,000 grant from the Waste and Resources Action Programme, which the council intends to use to roll out a programme of recycling roadshows next year.
Three-bin
By March 2008, the council is also hoping to have rolled out its three-bin recycling service to all 413,000 households in Birmingham where appropriate.
Mr Shields said: “We expect in most cases that two out of the three recycling strands will be collected at the same time by a divided vehicle and we have ordered around 18 Dennis Vehicles, which will be coming in the next few months.”
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Mr Shields explained that, whereas residual waste was managed by Veolia Environmental Service under a 25-year contract and sent to landfill or the Tyseley incinerator in Birmingham city centre, recyclables were currently sent to a materials recycling facility in Blackburn run by Greenstar.
He explained: “We wanted to prove the methodology of a mixed recycling service and did not want the lack of a more local facility to be a barrier. But we are currently negotiating to have a treatment plant closer to the city.”
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