Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Paul Barton, assistant director for environment for Wigan council, said the local authority had been working closely with WRAP and had focused heavily on communication with residents to inform them of the changes to the service.
It is claimed the changes will save £2 million from the cost of the service each year, and will start with new calendars from Monday 25th September (see letsrecycle.com story).
The new service has also been introduced to increase the council’s recycling rate from 43% to 50% by 2020, or the authority said it will face “significant fines”.
Consultation
At present, residual waste is collected fortnightly, alongside a brown bin collection for plastic, glass and metal cans, a fortnightly green bin for organic waste, and a blue bin collection service for paper and card, carried out every four weeks.
According to Mr Barton, the council’s recycling is collected by an in-house team and sent to FCC’s Ferrybridge MRF (see letsrecycle.com story).
The changes follow a consultation period, carried out early this year, during which residents offered their feedback on the proposals. The original proposals were to suspend the green bin from November to March each year but these have been scrapped after feedback. The green bin collection will now continue all year round.
Mr Barton said during consultation on the new service, three-weekly residual waste collection had received a lot of negativity. Since then, he explained, the council had sent out written instructions on recycling and information packs to residents, which had been ‘well received’.
“The feedback we had from the consultation was that the service was too complicated before particularly with the co-mingled, so we have tried to simplify it,” Mr Barton continued.
“We are also trying to be flexible with our waste policy. Large families can apply for a second residual waste bin.
“The biggest success has been our roadshows which have given one to one information on the changes. There has been 34 across the borough and thousands have attended.
“Residents have come to the roadshows feeling unhappy and left understanding why we have had to make the changes.”
Changes
Following the consultation – green bin collections will remain on a fortnightly cycle, while the other containers will be collected on a three-weekly rotation. A black bin for residual waste will also be collected every three weeks.
One of the key focusses of the campaign is the call for residents to recycle food waste.
Mr Barton said: “We are now promoting recycling of food waste in the green bins. People did not want the food in the waste stream for three weeks. Because of this, the food waste changes were well-received and reflected the concerns of the residents.
“We have a disposal point for the food/green waste that is managed under a waste treatment contract with FCC. We also have a contract to transport and treat the material with Ecoganix.”
The organic waste is sent for in-vessel composting (IVC) and made into a compost/soil improver used on agricultural land, explained Mr Barton.
He continued: “I’d say we are expecting 500-1000 tonne increase in food/green depending on participation.
“We are also planning to come down heavily on enforcement, and increase enforcement on quality,” Mr Barton added. “Education is being pushed on what goes where, but enforcement will be used if it’s not working.”
Cooperation
Last month, in an announcement by the council on the changes to the calendars, Cllr Kevin Anderson, cabinet member for the environment at Wigan Council, thanked residents for their cooperation.
He said: “We understand it may take some time for the new collections to bed in and so we’ll be flexible for the next few months while people are getting used to the changes.
“There is lots of support and information available about recycling on our website and at libraries and life centres.”
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