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2.0 INTRODUCTION

2.1 Introduction to the Project

Daventry District Council created the Green Waste Trial as a means of achieving what was the UK's national recycling target of recycling 25% of household waste by 2000. Four years after the introduction of its kerbside dry recyclables collection, in 1996 the County's average recycling rate was 9%. Daventry District Council decided to expand this collection to include wet recyclables as a means of achieving the target. The Council selected approximately 5,400 households in the rural area of the District to participate in the kerbside, twin bin, organic waste trial which ran for one year from August 1998. Hales Waste Control Ltd agreed to compost the organic material within their landfill site at Kilsby, and Waste Watch was asked to deliver an extensive public communication and education programme to support the Trial.

The project was funded through the Landfill Tax Credits Scheme by Hales Waste Control Ltd, and Daventry District Council provided the third party contribution of the Landfill Tax Credits.

2.2 Daventry District Council

Daventry District Council is one of seven local authorities in the County of Northamptonshire. The area includes the town of Daventry but is largely rural with around 28,000 households. The refuse collection service is a weekly collection using grey wheeled bins.

In 1995, an additional recycling collection was introduced. The kerbside collection scheme operates on a weekly basis, using red and blue boxes to collect dry recyclables. Textiles are bagged and placed with the boxes and all materials are collected on the same day each week. The table below lists the materials collected in the boxes. These are sorted at the Council's Materials Reclamation Facility (MRF) prior to collection by reprocessors. Around 75% of the households in the District have these boxes.

There are very few bring sites for recycling in the District and these are located at civic amenity sites. The recycling rate for Daventry in 1996/97 was 8.7% and 9.4% in 1997/98. These rates were achieved mainly through the red and blue box, kerbside collection scheme.

Table 1 - Materials collected in the recycling scheme

2.3 The Trial Area

The trial area received the same weekly waste collection and recycling service as the remainder of the District. The red and blue box scheme had been operating for over two years and approximately 70% of trial area households had boxes. The eleven villages in the trial area were situated in the North Eastern part of the District, to the north of the town of Northampton. Although a rural location, the area represented a mixture of all housing types, including farms and cottages, large and small properties, council housing and a small quantity of flats.

This particular area was chosen for the trial because it had a slightly higher recycling rate of 12%, compared to the average District rate of 9%.

The trial required each household to have an additional 240-litre brown wheeled bin for the collection of organic waste. The grey refuse bins and brown organic waste bins were collected on an alternating weekly service, while the red and blue box collections continued on a weekly basis.

2.4 Project Partners - Roles and Objectives

2.4.1 Daventry District Council

Daventry District Council's objective was to reduce the amount of organic waste taken to landfill and to achieve the Government's recycling targets of 25%. Daventry District Council part-funded the project by providing funds to secure Landfill Tax Credits from Hales Waste Control Limited.

Daventry District Council was responsible for the collection of the organic waste. The collection crews monitored the contents of the brown organic bins and rejected those which contained contamination. The crews attached stickers to contaminated brown bins and to grey refuse bins with additional waste. These households were then reported to Waste Watch who targeted them for further assistance. The Council's collection vehicles delivered the organic material to the Hales Waste Control Ltd's composting site at the Kilsby landfill.

Throughout the trial the Council adhered to their policy of collecting the refuse and green waste on alternate weeks and insisted that the householders try the scheme before any alterations were made. The only exceptions to this were:

a) If a household did not want to participate because they composted at home or they adamantly refused to recycle, the Council would withdraw the brown organic bin at the household's request. However, the household would only receive a fortnightly refuse collection from one grey refuse bin.

b) A household could have a larger grey refuse bin (360-litre) if there were five or more in the family.

c) A smaller household could have a larger grey refuse bin following a visit from Waste Watch to assess whether all requested materials were being recycled and that there was an exceptional reason for additional waste.

2.4.2 Hales Waste Control Ltd

In addition to funding the project, Hales Waste Control Ltd composted the organic material collected. This was the first time composting had taken place at Kilsby, and Hales Waste Control Ltd developed a section at their landfill site to compost the organic waste. Shredding services were hired in, as investment in equipment at this early stage of the trial would not have been viable. The shredded material was divided into windrows where it was recycled using the aerobic method of composting. The composted material then was used at the Kilsby landfill site for restoration purposes.

2.4.3 Waste Watch

Waste Watch's role was to deliver a communication and education programme to the trial area householders. The aim was to ensure maximum participation in the trial with the minimum amount of contamination and to maintain this throughout the trial. The project enabled Waste Watch to undertake research into the effectiveness of the communication methods used and to determine whether this raised awareness and increased recycling rates.

The householders were supported through information provided in a telephone helpline, letters, home visits, newsletters and the provision of kitchen pre-sort bins. Waste analyses and questionnaires were used to assess the effectiveness of the communication methods. Various media were used to inform the public about the trial including a televised launch, newspaper articles, radio interviews and articles in the Council's District-wide newsletter Daventry Calling.

2.5 General Project Costs

As part of Waste Watch's communication programme, householders were supplied with kitchen pre-sort bins for kitchen waste. Stickers and newsletters were used to communicate messages, and waste analyses were undertaken to establish waste profiles and identify contamination rates in the recycling collections. These costs are relatively high for a one-year programme. However, as the programme has been introduced District-wide and is running indefinitely, the costs become more economical. Many of the costs are one-offs - supplying the kitchen pre-sort bins - or could be spread out over longer periods of time.

Table 2 below details these costs:

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