Expanded recycling for Tewkesbury
Tewkesbury Borough Council has adopted a new waste strategy due to commence in April 2010. It will allow residents to recycle much more at the kerbside, including plastic bottles, cardboard and kitchen waste, as well as the current materials collected.
The Council has signed to meet some ambitious targets over the next 10 years, which are: 50% increase in recycling by 2015 and 60% by 2020, and it is hoped that this new waste strategy will meet these targets.
Each property will be issued with a new wheelie bin which will replace the kerbside boxes for all the dry recycling like paper, tins, glass jars and bottles, cardboard, plastic bottles etc. This will be collected fortnightly like the current kerbside recycling scheme.
Each property will also receive two kitchen caddies - one small caddy for the kitchen to collect food waste and one bigger caddy to tip the food waste into, so residents can present it at the kerbside for collection weekly. The refuse bin for landfill will be collected every other week.
Councillor Jim Mason, Lead Member for Clean and Green Environment, said, "The new weekly collection of food waste for composting and the addition of card and plastic bottles to the fortnightly recycling collection will enable all residents to divert hundreds more tonnes of rubbish away from landfill sites. With the new state of the art vehicles the Council will be using, we will be able to reduce the number of collection vehicles on the road.
"We are pleased to be able to respond to the residents' requests and provide these services to help them manage their waste in a sustainable way"
Waste minimisation and recycling is the Council's highest priority. We are pleased to be able to respond to the residents' requests and provide these services to help them manage their waste in a sustainable way."
The kitchen waste collection includes all cooked and uncooked food waste, including meat, bones, dairy products and gravy, etc. This is sent to a special facility where it is composted in a sealed unit with regulated temperature, unlike the garden waste scheme which is composted in the open air.
Cllr Mason added: "An estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food is wasted each year in the UK, most of which could have been eaten. This wastes good food, costs money and adversely impacts on the environment. The amount of food we throw away is a major contributor to the production of greenhouse gases in the UK, which in turn contributes to climate change. Now residents can recycle their food waste instead of sending it to landfill.
Over the next twelve months we will be developing the new service and helping residents to understand the new collection methods and the reasons why we are doing it."
05 May 2009