Waste and recycling consultation

The future of your recycling service

In July 2008, the Council conducted a waste and recycling survey. The survey, which was sent to 1,300 members of the Citizens' Panel and 2,000 randomly selected households from the Council's mapping system, received a 45% response rate. This was created in order to understand what residents think about existing services and to gather their views about future developments. This information is especially important as the Council's existing waste collection contract with Biffa Waste Services will come to an end in September 2009 and work will soon begin on the new contract for tendering next year.

The results of the survey showed that people are more satisfied with the waste and recycling services today than they were in 2003 or 2006 (when similar surveys were conducted). Over 80% of all respondents said they were satisfied with the waste and recycling containers, the condition of their street after Biffa had collected the waste and the standard of the service overall.

The current alternate weekly collection system has also bought about a significant change in behaviour, with 88% of respondents clearly expressing that they are much more careful about separating their recyclable materials from the general rubbish.

In the future, many of the respondents said they would like the Council to work on a number of areas in order to make recycling even easier.

67% of respondents would support a weekly collection of food waste combined with fortnightly general waste and recycling collection. As 40% of material placed within the black container is food waste, a future initiative of this nature would have a huge impact on the amount of waste that is placed in the black container.

Although 56% currently use the kerbside collection for disposing of their garden waste, the majority said they would like the Council to explore other types of containers instead of clear plastic sacks.

Those respondents who use blue sacks for their recycling said they would prefer to have a separate recycling container for glass and, overall, there was support for collection of specific types of materials such as batteries and clinical waste.

All the results will be considered by the Council when drawing up the new waste collection contract specification, with a view to appointing a new contractor in September 2009.