Recycling Service Changes

Grant funding

East Cambridgeshire District Council was recently awarded a £5 million grant through the Department of Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) `Weekly Collection Support Scheme’.

The aim of the fund was to encourage councils to either retain or reinstate weekly refuse collections. Where as in East Cambridgeshire refuse collections are already weekly, funds were targeted at improving recycling services.

Use of funds

The Council has been awarded £4,993,512.30, which will be used as outlined in the table below:

Purchase of vehicles	£2,043,757.68
Purchase and distribution of wheeled bins	£1,817,870.61
Additional collection costs	£841,030.99
Additional temporary staff	£258,674.61
Promotional activities	£24,678.41
Computer software licences	£7,500
Total	£4,993,512.30

Collection costs will increases as more vehicles and collection crews are needed for wheeled bin services. Additional staff will assist with introducing service changes and awareness raising activities. Vehicles will initially be operated by Veolia, but will be owned by the Council and returned at the end of their contract to be made available to replacement service providers.

Service Changes

Recycling and organics (food & garden waste) services will change to wheeled bin services, and additional materials will be collected for recycling. There will be no changes to the frequency of collections, although under the new system, recycling and organic bins will be collected on opposite weeks. The aim of this change is to reduce the number of bins that need to be put out for collection at any time, & the number of collection vehicles working in the same area.

	Current service		Proposed service
	Container	Materials collected	Container	Materials collected
Recycling	Black box (materials separated)	Paper Glass Cans	Wheeled bin (materials mixed)	Paper Glass Cans Plastic Tetrapak Cardboard
Organics	Brown sacks	Food waste Garden waste Cardboard	Wheeled bin	Food waste Garden waste
Refuse	No change

*A survey will be made of the District before changes are made, and where properties are unable to accommodate the new service, current services will continue.

Why change collection services?

Our aims are:

Increased recycling
Wider range of materials recycled
Easier to use services
Achievement of European recycling targets:
- Plastic recycling collections by 2015
- 50% recycling by 2020

Refuse services

A condition of funding is that weekly refuse collections must continue for a minimum of 5 years, and there will be no changes to refuse collections as a result of this award.

Service change timetable

New services will be introduced across the District over a 10 week period from Early September to early November 2013. More information about how the services will work and when each area will change to the new services will be made available in advance of the change.

Predicted recycling performance

East Cambridgeshire has recycled around 37% of its waste for the last 4 years, with a slight reduction over each of the last 3 years, so that 36.1% of our waste was recycled in 2011/12. It was not believed that a significant improvement to this performance was possible without changes to the way that services are provided.

It is predicted that new services will increase recycling to between 45-50%, an additional 2500 - 4000 tonnes each year. For 2011/12 East Cambridgeshire was 264^th of 352 English councils for recycling performance. 45% would put East Cambridgeshire in 134^th position & 50% would achieve 71^st position, so we look forward to climbing the recycling league table.

Public consultation regarding planned changes

A consultation exercise was carried out to gauge support for proposed changes during June & July 2012.

A total of 347 responses were submitted, with results indicating a high level of support for proposals. Headline results were:

95% of respondents believed the Council should do more to increase recycling.
79% believed the Council was right to bid for funding through the Weekly Collection Support Scheme.
76% believed proposals would improve dry recycling services, and 66% believed proposals would improve organics collections.
More residents would recycle paper, glass and cans through the proposed service than do now. (paper – 86% to 93%, glass – 89% to 93%, cans 77% to 91%
For additional materials introduced to dry recycling under the proposed scheme (plastic bottles, other plastic, Tetrapak & cardboard) there would be an average of 89% participation.
Residents including food waste in organics collection would increase from 46% to73%
63% of residents anticipated recycling or composting more material through proposed schemes than current services.
The only concern was a marginal reduction in those that would present garden waste through the proposed service, down from 87% to 84%. The likely reasons for this result will need to be considered and where possible actions taken to increase participation.
A total of 249 respondents provided further comments. The majority of comments related to the introduction of wheeled bin services 132 (53%) in favour, 81 (33%) against. There were a further 36 (14%) comments covering a range of other issues. The concerns of some respondents about the introduction of wheeled bins highlights the necessity to work with residents to bring about successful changes, whilst delivering a good quality service to overcome objections.

Full responses to consultation questions are shown in the table below.

	Responses					Responses as percentage
Question	Yes	No	Other	No Response	Total	Yes	No	Other	No Response	Total
1) Do you believe it is important that the Council takes steps to recycle more in East Cambridgeshire?	329	17	0	1	347	94.81	4.90	0.00	0.29	100.00
2) Do you support the Council's decision to apply for this grant?	275	68	2	2	347	79.25	19.60	0.58	0.58	100.00
3) Do you believe the proposed changes would improve services?
Recycling	265	81	1	0	347	76.37	23.34	0.29	0.00	100.00
Organics	228	108	1	10	347	65.71	31.12	0.29	2.88	100.00
4) Which of these materials do you recycle through the current recycling services?
Paper	297	39	0	11	347	85.59	11.24	0.00	3.17	100.00
Glass	308	35	1	3	347	88.76	10.09	0.29	0.86	100.00
Cans	267	76	1	3	347	76.95	21.90	0.29	0.86	100.00
5) Which of these materials would you recycle through the new recycling scheme?
Paper	324	18	0	5	347	93.37	5.19	0.00	1.44	100.00
Glass	324	19	0	4	347	93.37	5.48	0.00	1.15	100.00
Cans	315	27	0	5	347	90.78	7.78	0.00	1.44	100.00
Plastic Bottles	312	30	0	5	347	89.91	8.65	0.00	1.44	100.00
Plastic Containers	304	39	0	4	347	87.61	11.24	0.00	1.15	100.00
Tetrapak	298	43	1	5	347	85.88	12.39	0.29	1.44	100.00
Cardboard	317	26	0	4	347	91.35	7.49	0.00	1.15	100.00
6) Which materials do you currently include in organics collections?
Food waste	160	180	1	6	347	46.11	51.87	0.29	1.73	100.00
Garden waste	302	43	0	2	347	87.03	12.39	0.00	0.58	100.00
Cardboard	291	56	0	0	347	83.86	16.14	0.00	0.00	100.00
7) Which materials would you include in organics collections if wheeled bins were introduced? (Cardboard would be moved to recycling collections)?
Food waste	253	86	2	6	347	72.91	24.78	0.58	1.73	100.00
Garden waste	293	46	1	7	347	84.44	13.26	0.29	2.02	100.00
8) Would you include more food and garden waste in organics collections if brown sacks were changed to wheeled bin?
Food waste	181	162	2	2	347	52.16	46.69	0.58	0.58	100.00
Garden waste	182	160	2	3	347	52.45	46.11	0.58	0.86	100.00
9) Would proposed changes encourage you to move more of your waste from refuse collections to recycling and organics collections?	218	126	0	3	347	62.82	36.31	0.00	0.86	100.00

Recycling Service Changes