Three Rivers District Council - Recycling Scheme Success
posted in Case Studies |
Hertfordshire is running out of space at its landfill sites and by 2008 it will no longer be possible for Three Rivers District Council to dispose of its waste as landfill. The Government has set binding recycling targets of 22% of household waste to be recycled by 2004, almost double the current level of recycling in Three Rivers.
To encourage people to throw away less and recycle more, Three Rivers District Council introduced a new waste initiative in September 2002.
For the last six months, Three Rivers has been running a trial scheme in which a weekly ‘black sack’ collection has been replaced by wheeled bins and the fortnightly recycling service extended.
The Council selected the town of Croxley Green, as the trial area because many households already participate in the recycling service and the roads represented a good mixture of housing type and street conditions.
In addition to the provision of a grey box for paper & green box for cans & plastic bottles, Three Rivers have also introduced a black box for glass, a composter for kitchen & garden waste together with a 140 litre wheeled bin, the latter being supplied by Plastic Omnium Urban Systems.
The initiative has been supported with a leaflet to individual householders explaining the system and what wastestream to put into each container. In particular highlighting that no “side waste” would be collected, only waste within the designated containers. It was considered that a 140 litre wheeled bin would be sufficient volume for an average household of four individuals.
On average, in the three months following the start of the pilot….
There has been an 80% increase in the average amount of paper recycled and 81% increase in the average amount of cans/plastic recycled. Including glass, the total amount being recycled per month on the kerbside scheme has increased by 140%, as compared to the previous two months before the scheme started. Since trials started, the number of households putting out boxes has increased by 66%, as compared to the three collections previous to starting the trial. The average monthly refuse tonnage collected has also been reduced. Before the scheme started 73.34 tonnes of waste were collected per month. This has now been reduced to 58.78 tonnes per month. This is a 21% reduction in the amount of waste going to landfill every month.
Although there was initial uncertainty with the introduction of the new initiative, now over 75% of the community have said that they are very satisfied with the scheme.