Shropshire council appoints ex-Windsor waste chief

He replaces Adrian Poller who served as director of Shropshire Waste Partnership and then interim head of waste management for Shropshire council, before retiring at the end of July.

While at the Royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Mr Wolfe was “very, very involved” in the local authority pioneering the American rewards-based recycling scheme RecycleBank.

The Berkshire council last week began the roll-out of the second phase of its trial of the scheme, which is set to see residents able to gain rewards for a range of dry recyclable material (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, while Mr Wolfe said he believed the scheme would work well in “most places”, he said there had been “no actual discussion” about introducing the scheme in Shropshire to date.

And, he said that addressing challenges to collections posed by the local authority's large rural area were the main priority at present.

He said: “Windsor and Maidenhead is a smaller area than Shropshire, which itself is a very large county, so it represents its own challenges. It is very difficult to apply urban solutions to rural problems, so that is going to be one of the problems because of the remote areas and access issues and it is going to represent new challenges.”

Role

In his new role, Mr Wolfe's main responsibility with the unitary authority will be to oversee the Shropshire's 27-year waste treatment and collection contract with waste management firm Veolia Environmental Services, under which he revealed that the council was planning to introduce kerbside collections of plastic bottles for the first time.

Currently plastic bottles in the local authority are only collected via bring banks, however, the council intends to introduce collections at the kerbside during 2010.

Mr Wolfe said: “We have set a target to recycle or compost more than 50% of Shropshire's household waste by 2012. I look forward to working with my new colleagues in the council's waste management team, and with Veolia, to ensure that we deliver on this commitment, whilst continuing to provide local residents with high quality, value for money services.”

David Roberts, Shropshire council's cabinet member for local environment and economy, said: “I would like to welcome Larry to Shropshire and wish him every success in his new role. I would also like to say thank you to Adrian Poller for his hard work to help improve Shropshire's waste and recycling services over the past three years, and I wish him well in his retirement.”