Cheshire East Council are transforming their waste and recycling collection services to achieve savings of more than £1 million.
These savings will be made by reducing the number of staff and vehicles, by approximately 40 and 17 respectively, introducing more efficient collection routes and as a result of recently procured contracts for the processing of dry recyclables and garden waste.
The standard service will operate on a new three bin system, one each for recycling, garden and residual waste. The emphasis is on the silver bin, which will be used to collect all recyclables, including all grades of paper, mixed glass, tetrapaks, cans, aluminium foil, aerosols and mixed plastics.
The bins will be standard 240-litre wheeled containers that will be collected on an alternate weekly schedule. Sacks and 55-litre boxes will be provided for properties that cannot accommodate a wheeled container for the silver or black bin, and additional recycling containers will be supplied, free of charge, to those properties that generate more recycling materials than will fit into a single 240 litre wheeled container.
In order to roll the new service out across Cheshire East additional containers for the dry recycling service are required, it will cost in the region of £2.1m to provide every household with a 240L silver recycling bin.
The services will operate on a standard five day working week, including bank holidays, with the exception of the Christmas and New Year period.
Cheshire East Councillor Rod Menlove, Cabinet member with responsibility for environmental services, said: "We are now a Recycling service, not a traditional waste collection service. The Silver bin is central to this initiative and with these arrangements we will be able to recycle a huge range of materials. The full list of items that can be recycled will be clearly stated on a sticker on the bin lid.
"The environmental negatives of landfill are clear to us all. What cannot be overlooked is that the cost to the Cheshire East council taxpayer for landfill tax this year is £3.5m. Next year, this goes up to £4.2m unless we recycle more.
"We now have a real opportunity to make a collective effort to put the huge range of items that can be recycled in to the Silver bin. Being lazy and throwing these items in to the black bin is being socially irresponsible and is not acceptable to the vast majority of Cheshire East residents."
The Council believe that the reduction in staff numbers can be achieved mainly through putting an end to the employment of agency staff and voluntary redundancies.
The project will be rolled out in two phases. Phase one will cover the southern part of Cheshire East, beginning in May, and the northern region, which includes Alderley Edge, will start in October.
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