The Nottinghamshire borough originally planned to roll out the “recycling2go” wheeled bin collections over four years. But resident satisfaction levels of 92% prompted the council to include all 46,000 households in the scheme this month.
Green garden waste and a separate collection of paper will be carried out one week, with non-recyclables collected the next. Alternatively, householders will be offered a home composter instead of a green garden waste bin.
When the scheme was first piloted in 2002 the council had a recycling rate of 9.7% with targets of 12% by 2003/04 and 18% by 2005/06. By March 2004 the recycling rate had increased to 26.7% and the town hall estimates that figure will climb to more than 40% by the end of 2005.
The 5,600 residents in the recycling2go pilot zone were surveyed in June 2002, then in December the same year. Satisfaction levels increased from 78% to 88%, and the number of people recycling grew from 55% of respondents in July to 72% in December.
Rushcliffe concluded that marketing and communications were responsible for the increase in satisfaction as there had been no material improvements to the service.
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