East Devon district council is reporting a 57% materials recycling rate following the complete roll-out of its new recycling and waste scheme.
East Devon’s new service was first rolled out to residents in Exmouth in February before being rolled out to the whole district in June. Pictured: Exmouth
Under the new system, which includes a three-weekly residual waste collection service, there has been a 69% increase in recyclables and a 26% increase in food waste, from July to September this year compared to the same period last year.
The district council launched the service in partnership with its waste contractor Suez in June, switching from collecting residual waste every fortnight to collecting waste every three weeks and collecting recyclables and food waste collected weekly (see letsrecycle.com story).
Speaking at the LARAC, local authority recycling officers conference in Nottingham, Steve Holgate, director of municipal services at Suez and Gareth Bourton, recycling and waste contracts manager at East Devon, explained the journey they have gone through over the past three years.
Results
Mr Holgate revealed that between July and September, collections of recyclables and food increased by 52% and there was a decrease in residual waste by 8%, with 4,282 tonnes being collected.
From July to September this year, 1.9 kg food was collected and 4 kg of recyclables were collected per household per week compared to 1.5 kg of food and 2.4 kg of recyclables in 2016.
Suez carries out East Devon’s recycling and waste collections
Trial
Mr Holgate said that a survey conducted with East Devon residents revealed that they wanted to recycle more materials and improve the district’s recycling rate.
As a result of this feedback, Suez devised a system of adding a 70 litre reusable sack to the containers provided to residents, as well as adding plastics, cardboard, Tetra Paks and WEEE to their collections – in addition to metal cans and plastic pots, tubs and trays, which were already collected.
“Our analysis showed that if you put all of that into the recycling, there is less residual waste. So we came up with the plan to empty the residual three-weekly,” said Mr Holgate.
Following this, East Devon trialled the three-weekly collections in several wards in Colony in Exmouth and Feniton from September 2015.
At LARAC, Mr Bourton explained the various elements of the trial which had made it a “success”. This included a specially appointed member of staff to engage with residents and stakeholders and shorter routes for collection vehicles with dedicated crews working alongside council officers.
Under the new service, a 70 litre reusable sack was given to residents to collect their recyclables.
“We kept the route small, to allow the crew to engage with residents and take the time they needed to do a good job,” Mr Bourton said.
The council created dedicated webpages, branding and communications materials to engage residents that were later used as templates for communications when the service was fully rolled out across the district.
Following the trial, a new waste and recycling collection contract was drawn based on the results which Suez won in March 2016, worth over £30 million. Suez has provided collections for East Devon since 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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Source: letsrecycle.com Waste Managment
