St Albans city & district council has begun to trial collections of mixed rigid plastics after its bid to boost recycling rates through weekly food waste collections was denied funding from the governments 250 million weekly waste fund.
The council is seeking to improve its recycling rate beyond the 48.3% level achieved in 2011/12 to 60% by 2015 and has targeted mixed plastic trays and tubs as a material likely to help it achieve this.
From last month, residents in the West Hertfordshire village of Redbourn were the first in the borough to be able to recycle items such as yoghurt pots, margarine tubs and plastic food trays at the kerbside, and the council says that it will look to roll out the scheme to all households if it is successful.
A waste audit of the borough conducted in early 2012 found that food waste and plastics formed a significant part of the waste collected by the authority.
Service
At present the council currently offers a fortnightly kerbside collection service for all the residential properties in the district. Residents are given three 55 litre recycling boxes in which to put their recyclables; one for newspaper and magazines, one for cans, empty aerosols, plastic bottles and clean aluminium foil and one for glass, bottles and jars.
The council also provides wheeled bins for the collection of green waste, cardboard and food waste which is collected on alternate weeks to residual waste.
Originally the council had planned to add separate weekly collections of food waste and move to a commingled dry recycling service in order to boost recycling rates.
“It is disappointing that the council was unsuccessful in its bid for funding to help introduce commingled dry recyclable and weekly food waste collections”
Cllr Daniel Chichester-Miles
However, these plans fell through when the local authority was denied funding from the Department for Communities and Local Governments (DCLG) Weekly Waste Collection Fund.
Instead, the council is now hoping that adding the collection of mixed plastics which can be integrated more easily into its existing service. It hopes this will enable it to reach its 60% recycling goal.
‘Disappointing’
Councillor Daniel Chichester-Miles, portfolio holder for environment, St Albans city and district council, said: It is disappointing that the council was unsuccessful in its bid for funding to help introduce commingled dry recyclable and weekly food waste collections.
However, we remain committed to increasing the household recycling rate to more than 60%. We are therefore conducting this trial in Redbourn to recycle a wider range of plastics, other than just bottles. We will also be talking to our contractor about whether any further changes can be made to our recycling and waste collections in the near future.
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Under the scheme, St Albans waste contractor Enterprise will collect the mixed plastics commingled alongside plastic bottles, aluminium foil, drinks cans and aerosol containers which are then sorted by St Albans based recycling firm Pearce Recycling and sold for reprocessing.
The council will receive a proportion of the money made for the sale of each tonne of mixed plastic waste.
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