Recycling overhaul will save taxpayers more than £200k

AN OVERHAUL of recycling collections for households across York is aiming to slash the time it takes refuse crews to pick up rubbish and save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds.

York Council has announced plans to invest nearly half a million pounds in its kerbside recycling scheme as part of the authority’s ongoing drive to save up to 15m from its budgets in the next three years.

The proposals, which are due to be considered by councillors on Tuesday next week, involve householders being given boxes to separate recyclable materials into paper and card, glass bottles and jars and plastic bottles and cans.

It would streamline the current system, which involves collection crews often having to sort through rubbish to divide it up for recycling as they load it on to their trucks.

The new scheme will mean collection crews will spend less time sorting through recyclable material, which will help save 210,000 a year.

The overhaul is also aiming to ensure more households in York can be added to the collection rotas at no extra cost to taxpayers.

York Council’s executive member for neighbourhood services, Coun Ann Reid, said: “In the past York residents have shown their willingness to fully engage with attempts to cut down on the waste we send to landfill, and I am sure they will embrace this new method of sorting recycling with the same enthusiasm.”

A survey as part of a consultation for the council’s budget for the new financial year saw an overwhelming response from residents who are in favour of revamping waste collections to make them more efficient.

Out of the 12,684 results received in the consultation, 83 per cent of residents supported changing the way they recycled their waste.

A trial which took place in The Groves neighbourhood last year demonstrated that the proposed scheme will more than halve the time it takes for crews to collect recyclable materials – from 77 seconds to 18 seconds per household.

The current scheme has seen York’s recycling rate increase from 12 per cent in 2003 to more than 45 per cent last year as the council attempts to avoid millions of pounds in penalties which could be imposed under the Government’s landfill tax.

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