The scheme, which has been pioneered by Cheshire Recycling, will see recyclables collected fortnightly from over 11,000 properties in the two council areas. Each household will be given a blue box and blue bag in which to put newspapers, tins, cans, glass containers and textiles.
About 180,000 has been given to the project by WREN – Waste Recycling Environmental – which allocates landfill tax credits from the Waste Recycling Group which has landfill sites in the area. Themoney has been used to meet a substantial part of the costs to employ a supervisor for the scheme aas well as paying for the kerbside boxes, publicity material and one-off advertising.
Cheshire
The recyclables are being collected by Cheshire Recycling in a special vehicle provided by paper recycling and waste management company Cutts Brothers Ltd. Cutts Brothers has designed a lorry with split compartments which will handle cans, textiles, paper as well as separate green, brown and clear glass. The material will be taken to Cutts transfer station in Sheffield.
Berryman will then collect glass containers from the transfer station, while steel cans will be taken to Corus and aluminium cans sent to Alcan in Warrington for reprocessing. Cheshire Recycling, which is a subsidary of Bridgewater Paper, will collect the paper and donate 1 for every tonne collected to the Save the Children Fund. The Salvation Army will collect textiles.
Councillor Graham Baxter, deputy leader of North East Derbyshire District Council, said: “Glass, paper, cans and textiles are too valuable a resource to throw away. They account for up to 35% of the average bin. If all 5,000 families in North East Derbyshire use their blue boxes to recycle, 2.5 million bottles and jars of glass would be saved from landfill.”
Staffordshire Moorlands
A large number of local authorities were present at the launch of the scheme at the end of last week. Sarah Dagwell, waste minimisation officer for nearby Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, (pictured with Mick Keogh of Berryman), said that she was looking at a partnership scheme to extend recycling in the district.
She said: “It looks like a good scheme and we are looking at ways to increase recycling in the area. We will be talking to Cheshire Recycling and Berryman shortly.” Ms Dagwell added that she is looking to expand the kerbside scheme before 2005/06 to the rest of the district and the partnership approach is one possible way of financing it.
Currently, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council has a small kerbside scheme which covers 11,000 households and the council has also trialled a 140 wheel bin which aims to minimise waste. The fortnightly scheme collects papers, textiles and cans. The council has also compost trial collect garden waste for on-farm composting which they are hoping to extend in the next couple of months. The green waste scheme collected over 1,500 tonnes between April and October.
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