IT MIGHT be an inconvenient truth but introducing alternate weekly bin collections could be the only way to give Basingstoke and Deane’s flagging recycling efforts a significant boost.

Despite a major drive to encourage more residents to recycle, the borough is languishing at the bottom of the Hampshire league table when it comes to its recycling rate and is well short of hitting the Government’s 40 per cent recycling target by 2010.

However, there is one major obstacle when it comes to consideration of alternate weekly bin collections as an option – Basingstoke and Deane borough councillors are refusing to consider it.

The Conservative-led administration initially dropped the idea in October 2006 after a Gazette poll revealed that 93 per cent of 1,792 respondents were against it.

A report for councillors in September 2006, from Emma Broom, then head of street care, had said there was overwhelming evidence alternate collections – whereby black bins are collected one week and green recycling ones are collected the next – would create a “step change in recycling performance”. She predicted the increase in borough recycling rates would be “in the region of 10 to 12 per cent”.

Last week, The Gazette reported that the borough’s poor recycling performance had prompted the environment overview committee to set up a single-issue panel to examine ways of boosting recycling. However, the Conservative majority on the committee voted that considering alternate weekly collections is not something the panel should look at.

Conservative councillor Ranil Jayawardena said: “This should read as a firm commitment to all residents that we will not remove their wee-kly bin collections – this is a service they have asked for.”

The borough council cannot say when the special panel will report back. However, one thing is clear. Everything that has been tried in the two years since the idea of alternate weekly collections was abandoned – and education has been the primary tactic – has failed to significantly lift the borough’s recycling rate.

Hampshire’s leading authorities for recycling are Fareham Borough Council, which recycled 42 per cent of household waste in 2007/08, and Hart District Coun-cil, on 40 per cent.

Councillor Brian Bayford, Fareham’s executive spokesman for streetscene, said alternate weekly bin collections “made the biggest single difference over-night” in terms of the recycling rate when his council switched to it in September 2005.

He said: “That immediately made an increase of 13 to 14 per cent on our recycling rate.”

The introduction prompted a few complaints initially, but the situation soon settled down, and a later review revealed 80 or 90 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with the system, said Cllr Bayford.

“Some authorities have to bite that bullet and do it sensitively,” he added.

Fareham’s other big initiative is having a team of three advisers who will visit anyone needing help with recycling.

Cllr Bayford said they would target poorly performing areas, knock on doors to ask to look in the bins and help residents identify what is recyclable.

The team also ran a huge number of events to raise awareness, he said, and these efforts helped reduce contamination of recyclable material with non-recyclables from 19 to six per cent.

Fareham’s environment chief said his authority added “a few percentage points” by recycling one sack of garden waste a fortnight for free. Basingstoke and Deane currently charges £28 for recycling garden waste.

Cllr Bayford said Fareham’s refuse collectors do pick up non-recyclable rubbish bags left beside black bins – as also happens in Basingstoke and Deane – on one-off occasions, but this is discouraged. The council sends its advisers around to talk to persistent offenders.

Hart District Council has also introduced alternate weekly bin collections.

Cllr Stephen Parker, Cabinet member for environment, said: “It makes people think a bit because they have limited capacity.

“I found recycling significantly increased after the introduction of alternate weekly bins collection.”

He added Hart has also put a lot of effort into engaging with the public to let them know, through its website and in-house newspaper, what was possible and beneficial.

Hart collects but charges for garden waste, collects, but dissuades people from, leaving bin bags beside non-recycling bins, and is examining another authority’s trial at food waste collection.

Unlike Basingstoke, Hart does have kerbside glass collections. While Cllr Parker said that had boosted recycling rates by “only five per cent.”

He added: “With that and everything else, the recycling rate gets up to 40 per cent. We are not sitting on our results – the next target is 50 per cent.”

A spokesman at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has told The Gazette that representatives from a council which fails to meet recycling targets could be called to meet ministers or senior officials, and devise an action plan.

Hampshire waste collection authorities recycling performance league table 2007/08 – percentage of household waste recycled

  • Fareham Borough Council – 42.05
  • Hart District Council – 39.6
  • Eastleigh Borough Council – 39.13
  • East Hampshire District Council – 38.09
  • Winchester City Council – 36
  • Test Valley Borough Council – 35.09
  • New Forest District Council – 33.2
  • Havant Borough Council – 32.18
  • Gosport Borough Council – 25.86
  • Rushmoor Borough Council – 25.79
  • Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council – 22.98

Rate of change

IN the last five years Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council‘s recycling rate has risen seven per cent.

The proportion of household waste the borough collected for recycling in 2004/05 was 16.52 per cent and the following year it reached 17.29 per cent.

The garden waste service was introduced in March 2006, just before the next year of records began, and in 2006/07 the recycling rate hit 19.91 per cent.

Green bins were first introduced into Basingstoke, Whitchurch, Overton, Oakley, Tadley and Kingsclere in 2001 – the recycling rate in 2001/02 was 11.4 per cent – but rural areas used clear sacks or “piggyback” bins for recycling until the end of 2006. The change in rural areas helped push recycling up to 23 per cent in 2007/08.

In the summer of 2007, the borough started offering bags that people living in flats could use to collect material for re-use, and in April 2008, residents were offered the chance to buy cut-price green cones that break down raw and cooked food scraps.

Despite all of this, the borough’s recycling rate for 2008/09 is now predicted to be just 23.40 per cent.

Most recycling in the borough is done via the green bins. In January 2009, 23.82 per cent of household waste was recycled – 18.63 per cent being deposited in green bins.

Glass recycling accounts for 5.29 per cent, while textiles, garden waste, furniture, paper, fridges and televisions each add less than one per cent.

Education is the key

SHE is the councillor tasked with being the borough’s recycling champion – so this week The Gazette asked Councillor Anne Court, Cabinet member for the environment and climate change, for her views on how Basingstoke and Deane can improve its poor recycling rate.

Asked about whether the borough would consider schemes that could potentially boost recycling, such as kerbside glass collection or food waste collection, Cllr Court (pictured above) said: “Until the single-issue panel gets a report, I can’t comment.”

The one option the single-issue panel has been banned from examining is the effect of alternate weekly bin collections on recycling.

“Our residents are not interested – they don’t want to know,” Cllr Court said. “At the end of the day, they pay their council tax.”

Asked what her personal opinion of alternate weekly bin collections is, she said: “I’m against them – that’s what the people of the borough have told us they’re against.”

The borough environment chief said she was personally very much in favour of home composting.

She added that she uses a green johanna – a device for recycling food waste in the garden – and was “horrified” how much went into it, suggesting food waste collections could increase recycling rates.

“If you take that out of your black rubbish, it makes a considerable difference,” she said.

Cllr Court flagged up what she felt have been recycling successes in the borough this year. There has been a greater uptake of the bags for collecting unwanted garden cuttings, while bags that help people in flats recycle are also proving popular, she said.

Cllr Court said she believes education is the key to recycling. When people knew the benefits of recycling, such as discovering plastic pop bottles could be turned into a fleece, it had “a positive effect,” she said.

Recycling lorries in Basingstoke and Deane have just been repainted with messages that let people know how their household waste can be re-used. Vehicles are carrying slogans such as “recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours.”

Basingstoke and Deane repainted the vehicles after receiving funding from its partnership with the campaign Recycling for Hampshire.

Cllr Court said: “Research carried out in the borough has suggested that residents want to be inspired to recycle and that they want to know what happens to their recycling once it is collected.

“We can do our best through education and will try to convince the people it [recycling] is the right thing to do.”

Cllr Court pointed out that recycling officers attend events and visit schools, while the council website offers advice on what can and cannot be put in green bins.

Asked whether the collection of additional rubbish bags left beside black bins could be enabling people to throw away potential recyclable material, Cllr Court said: “This will probably all come up in the single-issue panel.

“We are very much in the hands of the residents. The more they want to recycle, the better it is for the borough.”

Campaigner wants more commitment

ONE of Basingstoke’s leading environmental campaigners believes too many borough politicians lack the “guts” to take steps that could lead to major improvements in the recycling rate.

Chineham borough councillor Martin Biermann believes Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council must take radical action if it is serious about tackling the problem.

“As far as I’m concerned, we have no drive, no commitment,” he told The Gazette. “We have got the attitude of let’s not put our head above the parapet.

“Change is not easy. It needs a bit of guts from our politicians, and I think some of our politicians are lacking guts.”

Cllr Biermann, who is an independent, is particularly unhappy the council has refused to even look at what alternate weekly bin collections could mean for the borough in terms of its impact on recycling.

While he is not advocating their introduction, he does believe it was “totally wrong” for the group that will be examining ways of improving borough recycling to be excluded from looking at the issue and the evidence.

Cllr Biermann said Conservative claims that their previous election pledge not to introduce alternate weekly collections because voters did not want them were meaningless, due to the fact that the other major parties had made the same commitment.

Cllr Biermann said the biggest downside with alternate weekly collections would be the smell and possible problems with vermin, but he believes these could be largely dealt with if the borough started a separate food waste collection, which could be turned into gas, electricity and compost.

He said these options might be too costly to pursue – but until they are investigated, the council could not be sure.

Cllr Biermann said successful recycling councils often had high-ranking staff members addressing the issue who would identify the savings as well as the costs of a scheme.

He feels that Basingstoke has “a couple of relatively junior officers running around like proverbial flies”, and added they are too busy to get the job done properly.

Other schemes that Cllr Biermann would like to see the borough examine are underground glass collection points, so people could drop bottles at any time of the day, and a Scandinavian system of vacuum shoots sucking waste to a central collection point, which could be particularly sensible to install when new neighbourhoods are built, he said.

Cllr Biermann thought the borough’s recycling rate might improve by just one per cent a year without radical action, and has little hope of reaching the 40 per cent Government target.

He added: “I would be massively surprised if we did make it, certainly with our current approach.”

Have your say

WHAT’S your view on how Basingstoke and Deane can improve its recycling rates? Where do you think things are going wrong?

Do you think that the idea of alternate weekly bin collections should at least be considered by your borough councillors? And if you think alternate collections are a bad idea, what do you think needs to be done to improve our recycling rate?

You can have your say online by commenting below, by emailing editor@basingstokegazette.co.uk or by writing to The Letters Editor, Gazette Newspapers, Gazette House, Pelton Road, Basingstoke, RG21 6YD.