COUNCIL SAYS ‘LET’S TALK RUBBISH’ WITH TOUGH NEW WASTE TARGETS

2 February 2007

Camden Council has set out tough new targets to encourage everyone who lives and works in the borough to reduce, reuse and recycle more of their waste over the next three years.

The council plans to encourage residents to recycle more, rather than fining non-recyclers, and proposals to help achieve this include: trials to change the balance of household recycling and rubbish collections, introducing business recycling collections and upping the amount of recycled goods the council itself buys.

The council’s Let’s talk rubbish: Camden’s waste strategy 2007-10, approved by its Executive earlier this week (31 January 2007), aims to reduce the overall amount of waste produced in the borough, maximise the amount of waste recycled, and increase the spend on ‘green’ purchases. The significant impact on the environment, contribution to climate change and the financial costs of handling the waste will keep rising if more rubbish continues to go to landfill.

A public consultation on Camden Council’s approach found majority support for the targets it has set for reducing, reusing and recycling waste, and the ways it plans to encourage these. The majority of respondents said they believed the council should offer incentives to recycle rather than fining people who don’t.

The council has set itself targets to be achieved by 2010 that include:

• Increasing the proportion of households in the borough that recycle to 60 per cent
• Reducing the amount of household waste collected per household by 5 per cent
• Recycling 35 per cent of household waste
• Recycling 10 per cent of commercial waste collected by the council
• Getting 25 per cent of Camden businesses to sign up to the Mayor’s Green Procurement Code
• Ensuring 30 per cent of council purchases are from recycled materials

Cllr Mike Greene, Executive Member for Environment, Camden Council, said:

“These are extremely challenging targets but show what we really want to achieve. Our strategy sets out how the council will tackle the huge challenge we face in managing Camden’s waste in a more sustainable way that causes least damage to the environment. We want to encourage everyone to reduce what they throw away and reuse where they can, whilst continuing to provide residents with a high quality recycling and rubbish collection service.”

The council aims to meet its targets by introducing a range of schemes and projects over the next three years, which will include:

• Looking into incentive-based schemes to encourage more residents to recycle –rather than using fines to penalise non-recyclers
• Trialing the exchange of residents’ two weekly waste collections and one recycling collection for two weekly recycling and one weekly rubbish collections instead – as more than 60 per cent of a bin’s contents can be recycled.
• Setting up new community composting schemes – these mean that residents in high rise accommodation, community centres and schools with no room for their own composting bin can share a composting system for their kitchen waste.
• Introducing a new commercial waste recycling collection service for businesses across the borough
• Replacing the paper recycling banks used by thousands of commuters, visitors and residents each day with multi-material bins that can recycle cans and plastic bottles as well.
• Putting recycling facilities in all Camden’s parks, wherever practical
• Running schemes to encourage reuse of household items, including setting up a new ‘reuse’ section at the Regis
• Road Recycling Centre and running more ‘Give and Take’ days

The council will also be getting its own house in order by:

• Cutting its paper consumption by 20 per cent by 2010
• Ensuring all council buildings have recycling facilities, where practical
• Making sure that almost a third (30 per cent) of council purchases – such as stationery and indoor and street furniture – are made from recycled materials
• Setting up wormeries at the council’s own buildings that have catering facilities, such as schools and the Town Hall, to compost their kitchen waste

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