LBCs’ joint effort to land targets

11 October 2006

Recycling and composting is being made easier in south London, ahead of a joint waste disposal contract for four boroughs about to go out to tender.
The London boroughs of Kingston, Sutton, Merton and Croydon plan a joint waste-disposal contract from 2008 to drive down estimated future tonnage costs while increasing the amount of rubbish treated rather than landfilled.
Minimising the amount of landfilling – crucial as the landfill allowance trading scheme fines loom on the horizon – will be key to the contract, and as part of this, the boroughs have developed a new £2M in-vessel composting facility to take 100,000t of green garden waste, which became operational last month.
The facility, at the Beddington Farmlands landfill site in Sutton, was accompanied by a new ‘dano drum’ separation plant to separate metals and organic material, allowing non-sorted waste to be recycled or composted.
But the boroughs also recognise that how the waste is collected will play a role in reducing landfilling and avoiding huge fines from 2009/10 onwards.
With this in mind, Kingston is to trial switching residual waste from weekly to fortnightly collections while increasing the frequency with which dry recyclables are taken to every week.
Organic kitchen waste material will also be collected every week, and residents will have the option of paying for garden waste to be picked up for composting.
The spokesman said that communication with residents over what they were expected to do was ‘crucial’, given the dramatic changes to how they should present their rubbish; any problems with the 2,500-property pilot could be ironed out in advance of the new disposal contract.
Currently each individual collection vehicle travels across the borough on different days, increasing the cost and carbon emissions.
Merton started a green waste collection trial involving 5,300 residents in July, to provide information on the practical issues to inform whether the service is made permanent, while Croydon, which only recycled 16% of household waste last year, is trialling the addition of plastics and cardboard to its fortnightly collections.

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LBCs’ joint effort to land targets

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