Agenda item

C Thorpe gave a presentation regarding an update on the New Waste Service. He raised the following points:

·         Before July 2013, there was an alternate collection of the bins and recycling was separated into different recycling boxes.

·         After July 2013, the service then moved to a fortnightly collection with co-mingled dry recycling, with a weekly collection for food waste.

·         The advantages of this new collection: reduction in complaints around summer smells, increased income through the Alternative Financial Model, an increased recycling rate, use of a single type of fleet and there is potential to collect extra material.

·         The new service was launched with a family introducing the new ‘family of bins’.

·         Throughout the summer, a lot of publicity was generated regarding the new service and what was expected of residents in order to make it successful including a #trashyselfie competition with summer roadshows to introduce residents to the new bins.

·         In October 2014, the service delivered 50,000 blue lidded bins, 55,000 kitchen caddies and educational packs were provided to residents.

·         To coincide with the new service launch, the council organised a vehicle billboard competition which involved local schools in the borough. The competition winners had their designs put onto the fleet vehicles and won an iPad mini and £100 for the school.

·          In the first week starting 24/11/14, 71 tonnes of food waste, 316 tonnes of mixed recycling and over 64,000 old recycling bins were collected.

·         3567 tonnes have been diverted from the green bins with the new service and residual waste has decreased.

·         Difficulties in the short term included issues regarding storage of the third bin and recycling advisors were employed to solve storage issues. Also more kitchen caddies needed to be purchased which has now been solved. The seasonal suspension of the green bin collection was contentious however this has now been amended and extended for this year. Furthermore, the policy change to only one green bin per property has affected residents with larger gardens and this is currently under review.

·         Difficulties in the long term include more bin and kitchen caddy deliveries as they did not account for those that may have been stolen. Also, trying to change habits has resulted in less tonnage collected than predicted. Furthermore, there has been a dramatic fall in the market price of recycling material.

Questions

Councillor R Sutton asked C Thorpe to clarify if the green bins will stop being collected at Christmas.

C Thorpe advised that the last green bin collection for winter will be 14^th December and this has been extended from last year. Calendars will be delivered to all residents in November to advise them of collection dates.

Councillor Hicks said that the kitchen waste caddies have been in households for 10 years and he had to apply for a new kitchen caddy because the green compost liners did not fit the old ones.

C Thorpe said there have been a handful of residents with this issue but the service did not take into account the 10 litre caddies that were introduced 10 years ago.

Councillor R Sutton asked that with the new 5p charge on carrier bags, can the new carrier bags that shops are providing be used in the kitchen caddies. C Thorpe said yes they could.

Councillor Birnie said that with the fall in market prices for aluminium and plastic, what about the price of cardboard? C Thorpe advised that cardboard prices had increased slightly, but steel prices had also dropped.

Councillor Anderson asked if it was possible to have the extent of green waste collected in next month’s performance report and keep the tonnage of green waste collected under review. Councillor Anderson said he had received a lot of complaints from residents about the green bin that had large gardens of their own that would allow for composting on site. He then asked if the borough is still looking at around 60% recycling rate.

C Thorpe replied that the borough had achieved just over 60% in quarter 1, and 55% in quarter 2.

Councillor Anderson said that a ball park figure of between 50-60% was a great achievement and a good justification for the new waste service.