05 : 59 am |10th September 2010

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'EASY AND ECONOMIC' COMPOSTING SCHEME GOES WEST

02/08/2004

A scheme that makes composting economically viable and easily enables residents to recycle over 50% of their rubbish has been adopted by three more councils, the social enterprise ECT announced today.

By March 2006, 150,000 households in the West Country district councils of Taunton Deane, Mendip and South Somerset – working together with the other Councils in Somerset as the Somerset Waste Partnership - will be able to put out their kitchen scraps for collection by ECT's doorstep recycling service.

The approach, which combines the collection of organic waste and dry recyclables, is being adopted after its successful use by ECT in four London boroughs, as well as Bath and North East Somerset. The London scheme, called Organics in West London, first began testing combined collections on 3,800 homes in 2002.

The West Country scheme is being rolled out in five stages between October 2004 and Feb 2006. As well as having items like paper, glass and textiles collected weekly for recycling, residents will be able to put out both cooked and uncooked kitchen scraps such as vegetables, meat or bread in a separate bin for composting.

Although collected at the same time, the recycling and composting bins are sorted by ECT workers at the kerbside to prevent contamination. In West London, the use of this method enables residents to recycle over 50% of their rubbish.

“The Somerset authorities have ambitious recycling targets,” explained Matthew Jones, Head of Waste Services & Sustainable Development at Somerset County Council. “Our analysis has shown that the segregated collection of food waste is a key element in the package of services we must offer to residents if we are to meet these targets at an acceptable cost”.

Commenting on the announcement, ECT's Managing Director Andy Bond, said:

"Our experience shows that if people are going to recycle they need a method that makes it easy. In our view, this means offering the weekly collection of as many items as possible. Not just paper, glass and cans but the kitchen scraps - which together make up over half of the average bin.

"This approach not only encourages people to use the service but it also makes it more cost effective for councils, saving them the trouble of having lots of separate collections. Because kitchen waste is collected for composting, councils also have the option of reducing the frequency of normal refuse collections."

The new weekly food and recycling collections will run alongside fortnightly garden waste and refuse collections across much of Somerset, with the assistance of £5M from DEFRA’s Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund. The kitchen waste will be in-vessel composted by Wyvern Waste Services Ltd.

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