Local authorities need to work more closely together to increase the value they get from the recyclable material they collect, according to the director for local government services at the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), Phillip Ward.
Speaking at the aluminium packaging recycling organisation Alupro's 2010 conference in the West Midlands last week (July 1), Mr Ward claimed that typically councils were “useless” at getting value from the material they collected.
“If each local authority does its deal it's going to be bad for them,” he said. “There are great opportunities for local authorities to sell things.
“Lots club together to buy things, can they club together to sell things? That's my challenge for local authorities. If you can club together you will have more bargaining power.”
The potential for councils to increase revenue by working together to sell recyclables was highlighted by 10 Hertfordshire councils jointly signing a contract earlier this year to send material to two recycling firms – generating an expected £560,000 a year in extra income in the process (see letsrecycle.com story).
Aluminium
In his speech at the day-long event held to mark the 21st year of aluminium packaging recycling in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story), Mr Ward also outlined work WRAP was doing to encourage aluminium can and foil recycling rates, including trailing targeted communications material and piloting large-scale manual sorting of foil.
He revealed that WRAP had been working with the Beverage Can Makers Europe to analyse waste composition to look at what stops people from recycling and to try to break down where waste arisings are happening in relation to social demographics.
He said that the research had identified that the least cans were being collected from the neighbourhood grouping with the highest arisings of waste cans and that WRAP had therefore developed and tested targeted communications.
It now plans to run two six-week trials of the communications materials in two local authorities until late September, with the aim of publishing results in late October.
Mr Ward explained: “We're hoping to be able to show that by targeting people with the right message we can get the right results for collecting cans.”
Foil
In terms of foil, Mr Ward said that the current capture rates for the material were “disappointingly low”, but revealed that WRAP was involved in work to make it easier to separate foil from cans and, in particular, aimed to run a “large-scale” trial using hand-picking to separate the two materials.
He explained that the aim was to “increase the quality of used beverage cans but also to lay the foundations of increased foil collections”.
Register for free to comment