With so much being recycled and food waste still being collected on a weekly basis, the amount of landfill waste (refuse that cannot currently be recycled) households throw away will be dramatically reduced and will therefore only need to be collected once a fortnight.

Councillor Liz Green, Executive Member for Environment and Sustainability at Kingston Council, explains: "The new service will change the emphasis from landfill waste to recycling. It will lead to an increase in recycling - which is what our residents want and is what we need to do for the environment and the Council's finances."

The new recycling and landfill waste collection service was approved by Kingston Council's Executive Committee on Tuesday 11 March. The Executive appointed Veolia Environmental Services as the company that will work in a long-term partnership with the Council to run the new service for the next seven years, with an option to extend for a further seven.

Veolia is the UK's leading waste management company and currently holds contracts with over 100 local authorities, including Kingston where it is already responsible for the Borough's street cleansing. Rob Dickson, Service Director (Environment and Sustainability) at Kingston Council, says: "Veolia has a proven track record in the Borough and with councils across the country. Having the same company responsible for our recycling and landfill waste collection and street cleansing contracts gives greater scope for the two services to work in tandem."

Councillor Liz Green explains the financial situation: "Kingston Council, along with every local authority in the country, has been set a very challenging target by central Government of achieving a 65% reduction in the amount of biodegradable waste we send to landfill by 2020. Authorities that exceed their 'landfill allowances' will be penalised with heavy fines of £150 per tonne - to get things into perspective, last year Kingston households sent 49,000 tonnes of waste to landfill!

"On top of this, councils also have to pay a Landfill Tax, which at the moment is set at £24 per tonne, but by 2010 will have doubled to £48 per tonne. If Kingston were to continue to send as much waste to landfill as it does today, it would cost the borough a staggering £9.9m in taxes and fines over the next eight years. This would have to be paid for through increases in council tax or reductions to other Council services. The easiest way to avoid these costs is to dramatically reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill - the new recycling and landfill waste collection service is designed to help and encourage residents to achieve this. It will be kind on the environment as well as kind to residents' pockets."

BERRYLANDS LESSONS

The new borough-wide service will be similar to the trial service that has been running amongst 2,500 households in Berrylands since March 2007.

The trial has been a great success in terms of waste minimisation and increasing recycling rates. The amount of waste recycled using the green box in the Berrylands Trial area has more than doubled and the amount of waste sent to landfill has almost halved. 91% of residents in Berrylands now regularly use the recycling collection service, compared to 44% in the rest of the Borough***. If the new borough-wide service came anywhere near to replicating this success, Kingston would become one of the top performing areas for recycling in the country.

The Council has also learnt some valuable lessons from the Berrylands trial which have influenced the design of the new service:

* The green recycling box, kitchen caddy and food waste containers were popular amongst residents in the trial, who said they were about the right size and are durable enough for the job... So they will be used in the borough-wide scheme

* But some Berrylands Trial residents said that the wheelie bin used to store their landfill waste is too small... So, the size of the wheelie bin used borough-wide will be increased from 140 Litres to 180 Litres. Larger wheelie bins will also be available to households who - despite their best recycling efforts - are not able to fit all of their landfill waste into the 180 Litre-sized bin

* Residents in Berrylands were concerned that the black wheelie bins had a small microchip in the lid... The Council has listened to these concerns and the landfill waste wheelie bins being used for the new service will not contain a microchip.

RECYCLING IN FLATS

The new and improved recycling service will not be limited to houses: flats are also set to benefit. A combination of mini recycling centres and a door-to-door collection service (based on the orange sack trial scheme) will be used.

Councillor Liz Green adds: "Residents who live in flats have made it clear that they want to be able to recycle just as much as those living in houses. But they recognise the challenges that flats present to a doorstep collection service and they have asked the Council to be flexible in the approach we take: there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution.

"So that's exactly what we are going to do. We will work with resident associations, management companies and individual residents on a block-by-block basis to implement a service that meets their needs. The roll-out of these services will start in September 2008, and the plan is to have the majority of flats up and running within 12 months."

Councillor Liz Green summarises: "We have to completely change our attitude to the way we dispose of our waste - not just in the Royal Borough but across the country. We can no longer simply collect residents' waste and rely on being able to bury it in landfill sites some distance from the Borough; it is expensive, produces gases that contribute to global warming and it is very harmful to the environment."

To support the roll-out of the new recycling and landfill waste collection service from September 2008, a comprehensive communications campaign will be run in the summer months. This will include the delivery of an information pack to every home in the Borough, dedicated Contact Centre staff to answer residents' queries and roadshows where residents can have their questions answered face-to-face.