In an attempt to drive up recycling figures Liverpool City Council is taking aim at low-recycling inner city areas by rolling out weekly collections.
Currently, the authority sits at 30 per cent recycling rates for households and hopes to expand its weekly recycling services to all areas in order to to boost figures.
Within the next six months the authority plans to replace 55 litre bins with 90 litre reusable sacks allocated to 28,000 terraced properties.
It also wants to remove around 3,000 residual waste bins that are currently found on waste routes.
Terraced properties within the city recycle only around 15 per cent of waste compared to other areas, which can be found to recycle around 30-40 per cent of waste.
In addition to this the council plans to improve the environmental conditions of 28,000 terraced properties by the end of the month.
A recording of minutes within a council session reads:
This programme will involve a co-ordinated approach to improving the cleanliness of alleyways by encouraging residents to store their waste appropriately to avoid attracting rodents, increasing residents’ capacity to store and present recycling materials, tackling problems associated with trade waste being fly tipped by business owners through increased enforcement and seeking to recruit community champions to assist the council to maintain improvements.”
Despite the recycling drive the council has announced that it shall not introduce separate food waste collections due to the lack of regional infrastructure to process the waste.
A report to be considered this Friday (17 Feb) advises that collections of food waste are, “not currently cost effective.”
The measure was to target approximately 21,000 tonnes of material placed in the city’s purple residual waste bins and black sacks.
Food waste makes up for 43.4 per cent of material placed in the purple bins.
The council claims that, “The main reason the cost of food waste treatment is high at present is that there is limited infrastructure available regionally and therefore as a result of a supply and demand imbalance, costs are high.”
It estimates that 37,349 tonnes of waste currently place within bins needs to be recycled each year to meet the 50 per cent target that the UK is supposed to achieve by 2020.
