Stratford District retains a weekly food collection service

Stratford-on-Avon District Council is retaining a weekly collection of food waste and will collect cardboard and plastic bottles as part of the new contract and is determined to safeguard the environment for future generations.  

Stratford-on-Avon District Council has seized the opportunity to provide residents with a kerbside collection of plastic bottles and cardboard and the new contract will retain a weekly collection of food waste.   

The new service will also operate at less cost than the existing arrangements and with residents help provide the opportunity to make Stratford-on-Avon the leading recycling district in the country.  

The District Council has decided to award the next Waste & Cleansing contract to Verdant for the next 7 years.  The new service will require 3 separate wheelie bins and will operate across the whole district.  

"This new contract will mean a slight change for service users but we have listened to what residents want and that is to maintain a weekly collection.  We've been able to do that by having food waste removed weekly.  However these new proposals won't come into effect until late next year giving us chance to tell residents of the new proposals and we have been led by some significant guiding principles in coming to this decision," says Cllr Simon Jackson, Environment Portfolio.  

"The question was how do we improve and already excellent service and I think we may have achieved this with this contract.  Throughout our consultations with residents they wanted food waste collected weekly and high on their agenda was to introduce a curbside plastic and cardboard recycling service and that's exactly what we are proposing and at a reduced cost.  

"Residents will still have a weekly collection but will now have wheelie bins for all their household and garden waste - with residual collected one week and recycling and green garden waste, together with food waste, the next week.  This means that food waste will be collected on a weekly basis.  

"There is a plethora of legislation and statutory imperatives placed upon councils to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and the imposition of increased recycling targets with the two intrinsically linked.  In addition the Council is keen to do all that is possible to safeguard our environment for generations to come.  We hope that residents will be encouraged to continue to recycle more and thereby reduce the environmental burden created by waste going to landfill.  

"We are committed to providing a scheme that is easy to understand and operate by our residents, a scheme that is acceptable to them and encourages them to reduce waste and recycle more.  A scheme designed to win the hearts and minds for the benefit of all including the environment and importantly, at the same time, providing a first class value for money service."    

• The Council's street cleansing contract comes to an end on 31 March 2008 and the refuse and recycling contract ends on 31 July 2008.
• In July 2006 the Executive agreed that these two contracts would be merged to achieve efficiencies in future service delivery.
• Assistance will continue to be given to certain groups of residents to take their bins to the boundary and then return them after emptying.    

Verdant Group awarded contract - the proposal in summary  

3 Wheelie bins

• Residual - household waste (plastic sacks to be withdrawn) (grey)                                        
• Recycling including plastic bottles and cardboard (blue) 
• Green Garden Waste (green)  

Residual waste               
Contained in a wheelie bin and collected every other week from the property boundary  

Recycling                         
Existing materials - paper, tins, bottles and glass plus cardboard and HDPE and PET plastic bottles contained in a wheelie bin and collected every other week from the property boundary  

Green Garden Waste       
Remains the same - maximum capacity 360 litres collected every other week all year from the property boundary  

Food waste                     
Collected with residual waste one week and green garden waste the next.  Food waste will include vegetable peelings, food scraps including meat, fruit and vegetables.  

These new proposals will be phased in gradually from the start of the new contract from August 2008, following a major communications and education programme with the introduction of cardboard and plastic bottle collections being introduced as early as possible thereafter and no later than April 2009.  

There is also flexibility within the new contract to deal with properties that would have problems accommodating 3 wheelie bins such as flats and some other types of properties by having bespoke collections.  

Street Cleansing
This decision brings together the Street Cleansing Service with the Refuse and Recycling under one contract.  This has provided the opportunity to make economies of scale and efficiencies in services to customers.