Recycling rates

Residents in South Oxfordshire have been praised for a 'simply stunning' first full year of a new recycling and rubbish collection service that achieved a recycling and composting rate averaging around 70 per cent, thought to be the best in England.  The service, estimated to have saved around £350,000 of taxpayers' money annually and generated up to £850,000 in recycling credits.

From June 2009 to early June 2010, South Oxfordshire District Council's municipal services contractor Verdant collected a total of 18,531 tonnes of dry recycling, 6,115 tonnes of food waste, and 7,434 tonnes of garden waste which, when combined with the district's recycling banks, brought the area-s overall recycling and composting to 32,621 tonnes.

Total waste going to landfill was 11,739 tonnes for the year, producing a recycling and composting rate of 73 per cent - and even after allowing an average 5 per cent rejection for possible contamination at the materials recycling facility handling South Oxfordshire's materials, this rate still averages 68 per cent.

In the year 2008/09, the council recycled a total of 21,753 tonnes of dry recycling, glass from recycling banks, and garden waste, and produced 27,964 tonnes of waste, achieving a recycling and composting rate of almost 44 per cent.

The new service has increased dry recycling collected from the kerbside by around 24 per cent, and total recycling and composting tonnage by 48 per cent. Waste going to landfill has fallen by nearly 60 per cent.

The relaunched scheme was implemented in early June 2009 by Verdant which had worked closely with the council for some months to redesign this important service for the area's 56,000 urban, village and rural properties.  Verdant had earlier been appointed by South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils to develop and deliver the new service, the company's first twin council win.

South Oxfordshire's new scheme featured alternate week collection of single stream commingled dry recyclables and residual waste from wheeled bins, weekly collection of food waste (a first for the county), and an already established subscription-based garden waste collection service. The range of collectable recyclables was extended to include glass, food and drinks cartons, aerosols and foil for the first time, and commingling was chosen as a proven easy way for residents to recycle more materials.

Verdant delivered over 200,000 wheeled bins and kitchen caddies in the run-up to the launch, and also took on the customer help line service which had previously been run by the council. The company made a significant investment in customer relationship management software that linked seamlessly with data captured by microchips in the wheeled bins.

This data is transmitted by Verdant's collection vehicles to a central database to produce real time, accurate information that helps answer resident queries and service complaints. Calls to the help centre have halved since rollout, and missed bins are now running at a very low 25 per 100,000 collections per week.

LARAC Awards

In October 2010, South Oxfordshire District Council scooped a national award for the most improved recycling rate.

The council was announced as the winner of the Best Improved Recycling Rate at the LARAC awards, which are designed to recognise the hard work carried out by councils and recycling officers across the county in reducing waste and driving up recycling rates.

The award was for increasing the recycling rate from 44 per cent to 64 per cent between April 2009 and 2010. This included ten months of the council’s new waste service, which was introduced in June last year. During the first 12 months of the new service, the council’s recycling rate has risen even further to 70 per cent on average - thought to be the best in England.