Recycling improvements save Richmond 4m

Increasing recycling tonnages and getting more income from the sale of recyclables helped Richmond council save 3.9 million on its waste and recycling costs in 2010/11.

The West London council has revealed that it increased the tonnage of recycling collected by 1,700 tonnes from the previous year to over 36,000 tonnes in 2010/11.

It also negotiated new contracts for the sale of recyclables, including paper and card, plastics and textiles collected from households. These deals began in November 2010 and contributed 40%, or 1.56 million, of the total savings.

The council also made savings by reducing the amount of waste it sent to landfill and, as a result, had to pay landfill tax on. This includes savings from composting organic waste rather than sending it to landfill.

Richmonds waste and recycling collections are provided by Veolia Environmental Services, under a 10 year contract which began in April 2004.

The local authority has recently added plastic food trays, yoghurt pots and cardboard containers to the list of items that can be recycled at the kerbside.

Overhaul

And, last year, it began an overhaul of its flats recycling scheme, an initiative now set to be rolled out borough-wide (see letsrecycle.com story). According to the council, this change, which involves a reduction of the number of recycling bins flats residents have to use, has led to an annual efficiency saving in collection contract and transport costs of over 200,000.

Councillor Virginia Morris, Richmonds cabinet member for environment, said it was a combination of all these initiatives which brought about the multi-million pound saving.

Every penny spent on land-filling rubbish is a waste of public money. The Council has worked hard during the past year to cut costs and secure a better deal from our contractors, and were pleased residents have played their part by recycling more, she said.

Last years savings show by doing simple things like placing paper, card and cartons in the blue box and plastics, glass and cans in the black box, everyone can help save millions of pounds.

Recyclable sales

Commenting on the contribution of the new contract for recyclable sales, the spokesman said: A major contributor to the income is the paper and card stream, both in weight and value.

Under this deal, 12,000 tonnes-a-year of mixed paper, cardboard and cartons is being sold to Newport Paper. This material is first taken to the councils depot in Twickenham before being sent on to Stora Ensos Langerbrugge mill in Belgium.

A separate contract involves cans, foil, plastic bottles, glass bottles and jars and other mixed plastic containers taken to the depot before being sold to Biffa, which sorts them at the Enfield materials recycling facility.

And, a third deal sees textiles, clothes and shoes being collected and recycled by London-based textile recycling company LM Barry.

The spokesman said the better prices had been obtained because market values for paper and card in particular increased dramatically last year compared to under the previous fixed contract.

He added: The council also has a good reputation for supplying high quality material with no contamination.