Recycling rates soar after changes to bins

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RECYCLING rates have increased to 43.6 per cent since proposals to reduce bin collections to a three-weekly system were announced, Oldham Council Leader Jean Stretton has confirmed.

Councillor Stretton has praised the public for their response to new waste collection arrangements, which were announced in July put into action last October.

Comparing the third quarter of 2016 with the same period in 2015, the first set of comparable figures since the change was announced, the amount of household waste being recycled has gone up from 36.8 per cent to 43.6 per cent.

Councillor Stretton said: "Given current trends, we now expect this year's overall recycling rate to average out to between 45 and 47 per cent, which is really good progress - and it's all down to you.

"The public response to the changes - ordering extra blue, brown and green bins, for example - shows you've been recycling more and doing it smarter.

"This really matters because our future has to be about less waste and more recycling."

She added that since the changes were announced in July, the council has sent out more than 25,000 recycling bins to local residents, a significant increase of the average of 15,000 bin requests normally received over a 12-month period.

Applications for extra grey bins, requested by households with extra waste that they cannot recycle including homes with more than five people or a household with two or more children in nappies, has also increased from 300 to 1,700.

The new waste collection arrangements, saw all bin collections switch from a two to a three week cycle.

The simplified collection pattern means that grey bins for general rubbish are collected collected one week, blue bins for paper and card the week after and brown bins for glass, plastics and tins the following week. Food and garden collections remain weekly.

The changes were designed to cut the amount of waste being sent to landfill and to promote more recycling across the borough, although some predicted it could lead to a rise in flytipping.

The Council Leader said that the council will be continuing their "zero-tolerance" approach to flytipping in the borough and pointed to recent council prosecutions of flytippers in the borough, all of which had dumped waste before the waste collection measures came into place.

She said: "The fly tipping we all see in local media is not what responsible households dispose of in the bins provided.

"I'm pretty sure that the mattresses, the fridges and the sofas that are reported as fly tipped across Oldham would never have fitted into the grey bin anyway."

She urged residents to report any flytipping to the council and help in the fight against flytipping.

"It's not Oldham Council that dumps this waste, but it does fall to us to clean it up - and at a cost of almost £1m a year to you, the local taxpayer, " she said.

"That is £1m that could be spent providing services to residents instead of cleaning up."

Residents who spot someone flytipping or dumping waste is urged to report it online at www.oldham.gov.uk/forms/form/172/en/fly-tipping_report_form or by calling 0161 770 2244.