Cheshunt, UK – Broxbourne Council has announced a pilot study along two roads in the Borough to reach out to residents ‘hearts and minds'. The aim of the Council is to increase recycling and reduce residual waste.
A recent meeting of the Council’s Environmental Services Committee agreed the six month pilot scheme to start at the beginning of November.
Residents are to be issued with purple sacks, showing the Broxbourne logo, for residual waste rather than the conventional black sacks. However they will be issued with a limited number of them only, averaging one per week over the period of the trial.
Should they require more then they will have to pay for them with a roll of ten bags costing £2.80. No other bags will accepted by refuse collection operatives.
This suggests that should a householder need one extra bag per week this would result in around a £14 additional costs on an annual basis. Families needing two extra bags would pay an additional cost of approximately £28 per annum.
The big question is whether this will be viewed by residents as a sufficient incentive to change their recycling habits.
The intention of the pilot is that residents will be persuade not to place recyclable materials in residual wastes destined for disposal, but to recycle them through available kerbside collection service for paper, glass and cans or the network of neighbourhood recycling centres for other materials
Residents in the Goffs Oak and Rye Road areas of the Borough have been chosen to take part in the pilot this autumn.
At present the Council is not pursuing alternate weekly collections or strict enforcement policies. Earlier this year a challenge was issued by the Council to residents, by setting a target of 20% for dry recycling.
In 2005-06 the council had a dry recycling rate of 13.4% and indicate that currently they are recycling and composting in the region of 30%.
Broxbourne says that although last year’s best value general survey showed that the public still hold the Council’s refuse and recycling service in high regard, the level of recycling in the Borough is relatively low when compared to other districts in the Hertfordshire.
The Council has said that it would like to hear from residents on how they feel that the goals of waste minimisation and increasing recycling can be achieved.