Vale of White Horse is top recycler in 2011/12

As anticipated by letsrecycle.com earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story), annual figures published by Defra today (November 8) show that the Oxfordshire council has topped the recycling, composting and reuse league table for England (see table below).

Meanwhile neighbouring district council South Oxfordshire clinched second place with a 67.9% recycling rate, closely followed by Rochford district council in Essex which came in third with 67.4%.

Both Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire councils have been operating a joint waste collection service over the past two years, delivered by Biffa, which involves alternate weekly collections of waste and recycling and weekly food waste collections.

At the other end of the table, Ashford borough council in Kent remains at the bottom of the league table with a 14% recycling rate, followed by the London borough of Lewisham with 17.2%. Ashford has shown no improvement in its recycling rate since 2010/11 however the council, as part of the Mid Kent Joint Waste Partnership, has recently named Biffa as the preferred bidder for a 8.6 million waste collection contract, which is hoped to boost its recycling performance (see letsrecycle.com story).

At present, Ashford provides weekly collections of residual waste in black sacks and kerbside recycling box collections for two thirds of households for paper, cans and glass.

Runnymede

Notably, Runnymede borough council in Surrey was the most improved council in 2011/12, as its recycling rate increased by 18 percentage points from 29% in 2010/11 to 47%.

During 2011/12 Runnymede operated a weekly collection of recyclables, which was delivered by contractor Biffa. In addition, the council collected residual waste on a fortnightly basis as well as green waste. However in October 2012 the council brought the recycling collection service in-house and moved to an alternate weekly system (see letsrecycle.com story). The service sees the council collect recyclables commingled one week and residual waste the next. Weekly food waste collections were already introduced.

Other councils which showed a large increase in their recycling rates included: the London borough of Newham, West Oxfordshire district council and Maidstone borough council.

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For a full break down of English councils’ performance click here (Microsoft Excel is required).

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Oxfordshire

Vale of White Horse was also among the top ten most improved councils for 2011/12, with a 32.72% increase on its 2010/11 performance. The council rolled out its new service with Biffa in October 2010.

The service, which is shared with South Oxfordshire, sees dry recyclables including paper and card, glass, cans, aerosols, foil, plastic bottles and packaging and food and drink cartons collected in green wheeled bins on alternate weeks to residual waste in grey wheeled bins, alongside weekly food waste collections and a fortnightly charged for garden waste service. The councils also have a strict policy of not collecting side waste.

Matt Prosser, strategic director for both Oxfordshire councils, said they introduced the new service as a response to residents wanting to recycle more. He said: Recycling is really all in the head. Their mind set matched the councils mind set, which meant we all wanted the same thing.

He identified the critical success factors as having the cross-party political will to launch a heavily redesigned service, communicating consistently and frequently with residents, and sticking to objectives when facing some criticism during the early days of service roll-out.
Mr Prosser added: Above all, we kept it simple so that residents could recycle as much as possible in the easiest possible way.

Biffa

Commenting on Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshires achievements, Biffas development director Pete Dickson, said: They are very close to achieving a 70% rate which is something of a gold standard for local authority recycling, and were already looking at ways to improve the recycling rate further.

Mr Dickson added that the duos performance provides further proof that alternate weekly collections and commingled dry recycling collections can significantly lift recycling yields, increase resident participation and save money, without compromising service quality.

This collection system diverts high volumes of waste from landfill because it makes it easy for people to recycle, and to recycle more. Highly automated MRF processing turns their recyclables into high quality recyclates that command good prices from local, European and world markets. What these two councils do firmly rebuts the rather tired and dogmatic argument of those who says that source-separated collections are the only way to produce quality recyclates.

Rochford

In Rochford, which was the top performer for recycling last year (see letsrecycle.com story), the council operates a three bin system one for residual waste, one for garden and kitchen waste and one for dry recyclables. Organic waste is collected weekly by contractor SITA UK, while the other two are collected on alternate weeks.

The council’s portfolio holder for the environment, Councillor Mike Steptoe, said: For a local authority area the size of Rochford to have become one of only three places in England to recycle more than two thirds of their waste is a stunning achievement.

The difference between the top performing authorities in the country is extremely narrow, and Im heartened to see the Rochford district being one of those top performing areas.

“We know that our residents are keen recyclers and I would like to thank them for helping us to achieve such high rates. Id also like to thank the team at Rochford district council who have worked hard to achieve this milestone.”