Funded by the second round of DEFRA's 140m recycling fund, the city council is to provide residents with a second bin for their recyclables. Newspapers and magazines are already collected in the city, but cardboard, tins and cans are to be included in the new scheme.
Adrian Richardson, the council’s waste policy manager said that starting in October the scheme will go through a number of phases each extending to a further 13,000 homes. The scheme is expected to be fully operational by December 2004, it will be citywide covering around 75,000 households.
“We’re currently getting around 3,000 tonnes per year from our newspaper collection,” said Mr Richardson, “We’re hoping to get to the high teens with our kerbside collection combined with CA and bring sites.”
He added that the council is considering a separate collection for glass which is only collected at bottle banks at the moment despite the presence of the Midland Glass reprocessing facility in the city (see letsrecycle.com story).
Recyclables from the city's new collections will go to the new 84,000 tonne capacity MRF at Alton, expected to open in the summer 2004. Mr Richardson said: “The timing of it all has been constrained by MRF capacity. We have worked with our Project Integra partners to get the capacity we need.”
A green waste collection pilot scheme is also being trialled in 2,300 households in five areas of Southampton. The council hopes to extend this to all residents for a charge of 15 per year for collection.
Integra
Southampton is one of the local authorities in the Hampshire waste partnership, Project Integra. The city is one of the poorer performers in the partnership when it comes to recycling – with a rate of 9% compared to the Project Integra average of 21.4%. The council has a statutory target to reach 24% by 2005/06.
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