North West Leicestershire district council has announced that it has won the contract to retain and sell the recyclables collected via its in-house kerbside sort collection service.
The seven year contract was awarded last month by Leicestershire county council (LCC), the statutory waste disposal authority, following a competitive tender. It will deliver a potential £500,000 in annual income, said the district council.
North West Leicestershire is the only district council in Leicestershire to operate in this way. Other authorities send commingled material to Leicester-based recycling firm Casepak which has contracts in place with Leicestershire county council and waste collection authorities, including Blaby, Charnwood and Harborough councils to process dry recyclables (see letsrecycle.com story). The City of Leicester has a fully integrated waste management contract with Biffa under a Private Finance Intitiative (PFI).
Pictured: Cllr Alison Smith, deputy leader and portfolio holder for community services North West Leicestershire, at the waste depot in Coalville.
The income from recyclables will help mitigate the loss of recycling credits worth £400,000 which the county council will withdraw in April 2018, said North West Leicestershire.
Kerbside
The authority, which has its headquarters in Coalville, operates its own kerbside sort system, where residents sort their waste and recycling into red boxes, a blue bag, a yellow bag, a brown-lidded bin and a black wheeled bin.
According to the council’s website, plastics, food and drinks cans, glass bottles, cardboard and paper are collected and sent to the authority’s depot in Linden Way, Coalville where it is then sold to reprocessing and recycling companies.
Cardboard is collected in the yellow bag and sold to Smurfit Kappa and paper collected in the blue bag is sold to Chester-based UPM Kymenne. Plastics and cans are collected in the red boxes and are sold to Viridor.
Residents sort their waste and recycling into red boxes, a blue bag, a yellow bag, a brown-lidded bin and a black wheeled bin.
Garden waste that is collected in the green lidded bin is taken to a windrow composting facility in Lount near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which is run by Suez.
The authority also collects textiles which can be placed in a carrier bag and these are sold onto Notingham-based textiles reprocessor Devizes Textiles.
Cllr Alison Smith, deputy leader and portfolio holder for community services for North West Leicestershire, said: “We’re very thankful to our residents for doing such an excellent job in recycling their waste. In winning this contract and being able to sell recycling materials, it means we can carry on putting the income we receive back into services for the local people who have put in that recycling effort.”
Leicestershire county council cabinet member for waste, Cllr Blake Pain, said: “Following a competitive tendering process, we are delighted to be able to continue working with North West Leicestershire district council in our attempts to encourage residents to recycle their waste.”
Recycling credits
The authority has its headquarters in Coalville (Pictured: Memorial Square in Coalville).
From 1 April 2018, the county plans to enter new local arrangements on issuing recycling credits.
Under section 52 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, recycling credits allow waste disposal authorities to provide incentives to waste collection authorities to offer effective household collection arrangements.
The county council said that it is setting up a system where all recycled waste collected by district councils is directed to the most appropriate facility, removing the need for recycling credits.
Under the new arrangements, the council said that it could save the authority more than £1 million a year from the recycling credits budget for dry materials in 2018/19.
In 2016/17, the value of the recycling credit was £52.91 per tonne and the county council’s 2016/17 recycling credits budget was over £3 million.
Commenting in 2016 on the changes to the credit system, Leicestershire’s Cllr Blake Pain, said that recycling credits were “no longer fit for purpose” but that the authority would work with district councils to encourage them to collect as much recyclable waste as possible.
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Source: letsrecycle.com General
