Kier Street Services, which won a 10 year street scene contract with Corby borough council in 2004, said recycling rates have shot up with the launch of a new alternate weekly collection scheme.
 Kier is switching from multi-compartment kerbsider vehicles to single compartment general compaction RCVs for its recycling scheme |
In just a month and a half, recycling rates had grown from 28% to over 40% since the three-bin system was introduced, it said.
The news represents a complete turnaround for a council whose recycling efforts were described by the Audit Commission in 2001 as being “poor and unlikely to improve” (see letsrecycle.com story).
Under the alternate weekly scheme, a 50 litre recycling box has been replaced with three 240 litre wheeled bins.
The bin for black bag waste (Black bin) and either green waste and card (green bin) or plastic bottles, cans and paper (brown bin) is collected one week, with the remaining bin collected the following week.
Recyclable material which had previously been sorted at the kerbside is now sorted at Oakley Recycling's materials recycling facility (MRF) in Corby – which Kier says makes the service more cost-effective, safer and less labour intensive.
John Ranaghan, deputy general manager at Kier Street Services, said: “The scheme is going very well and recycling rates have already gone up from 28% to over 40%. Corby council have instructed us to collect materials co-mingled as the bins are much bigger and the collections less often so it would not have been practical to separate the material at the kerbside.”
Vehicles
In order to deal with the new co-mingled collections from 24,200 properties in Corby, the company has bought three Dennis Eagle general refuse vehicles with compaction units at an estimated cost of 450,000.
Kier Street Services hopes that this will reduce the risk of waste operatives suffering from repetitive strain injury by having to bend over to sort materials manually.
Paul Flight, general manager at Kier Street Services, added: “The use of a single compartment, rear-loading RCV is less labour intensive and therefore more cost effective, and it also delivers positive health and safety benefits as the manual handling of waste at the kerbside is taken out of the equation.”
| Related links: |
Corby borough council is planning to add glass to the list of materials it collects later this year, which could boost recycling levels even further.
Cllr Pat Fawcett, leader of Corby borough council said, “The improvements will lead to a reduced impact on our environment through the diversion of our waste away from the landfill site at Weldon. The community will be contributing to a collective effort to boost Corby’s recycling rate which will not only benefit us today but other generations to come.”
Subscribe for free