The West Country council had trialled collection of mixed rigid plastics such as garden furniture and toys – at its Trowbridge household recycling centre (HRC)from September 2010 to January 2011 with a view to rolling out the provision to all 11 household recycling centres in the region.
The trial was carried out in conjunction with the councils waste contractor Hills Waste Solutions and saw material sent to Bath-based recycling firm Wiltshire Plastics for reprocessing.
However, the trial was deemed unsuccessful after yielding just 46 tonnes of material over five months.
A Wiltshire council spokeswoman said: We carried out a short trial with Hills Waste Solutions Ltd to see if we could recycle rigid plastics such as garden furniture and toys.
Unfortunately the trial hasn’t been successful as the cost of implementing this across all HRCs in the county is just not affordable. We will continue to review this situation and look for options to increase the range of materials collected for recycling.
The spokeswoman added that council will continue to collect other types of plastic at its household recycling centres. And, it said that the end of the mixed plastic trial will not impact Wiltshires plans to add plastic bottles to its kerbside recycling service over the course of 2011.
The council previously trialled the collection of mixed rigid plastics under an arrangement with Hills and Swindon-based Worldwide Biorecyclables in July 2008. This trial was suspended in early 2009 when Worldwide Biorecyclables ceased to trade.
Hills explained its involvement with Worldwide after the Swindon-based firm was named as one of the companies allegedly involved in the export of waste materials to Brazil in July 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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