'Recycling Revolution' set to hit Sheffield's Kerbside

9.52.52pm GMT Mon 14th Dec 2009

Cllr Shaffaq Mohammed (left) and Cllr Paul Scriven (right)

Today the Liberal Democrat Leadership on Sheffield City Council have announced bold new plans that will see huge improvements to the kerbside recycling service offered to local households. The new free service, which will begin to be rolled out from Spring 2010, will see all households in Sheffield able to recycle paper, card, plastic bottles, metal cans and glass via the kerbside, with a collection every two weeks. In addition garden waste will be collected via the kerbside every month from all households. By Winter 2010 the new service will be fully rolled out across Sheffield.

Currently Sheffield's local residents have a monthly scheduled kerbside recycling service for paper and card via the blue bin, whilst an additional 45,000 properties (around one fifth of local households) are able to recycle garden waste through a green bin.

The new service amounts to an impressive total of four additional materials (or three if you already have a green bin) and a doubling of the main scheduled collection.

The announcement comes after local people gave a clear message that they want to be able to recycle more materials during two rounds of citywide consultation over the last year.

Lib Dem Council Leader, Councillor Paul Scriven said: "There has been a strong feeling locally for sometime that Sheffield lagged behind other cities when it came to kerbside recycling. Therefore I'm delighted to be able to announce these bold new plans to vastly improve the service.

"Our plans will see local people able to recycle many more new materials via the kerbside and the main scheduled collection doubling. We want to make it much easier for local people to recycle with the ultimate aim of seeing an increase in Sheffield's recycling rate. What's more we have been able to offer all this without the need of an extra bin which could clutter up pavements."

The new kerbside recycling service will collect plastic bottles, metal cans and glass in the blue bin currently used for paper and card. Paper and card will be collected via a new large box. In addition three large hessian sacks will be provided to all households for the collection of garden waste (with the option of being able to purchase three extra sacks). The sacks will replace the current green bins.

These proposals are at the heart of Sheffield's new Waste Strategy that is set to be adopted by the City Council's Cabinet on Wednesday (25 November).

The Strategy sets out a vision of how Sheffield's waste will be managed up to 2020 in a way that reduces its environmental impact and exceeds public expectations. This vision will be achieved through three objectives - reducing Sheffield's waste, helping residents and businesses to recycle and minimising the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

Councillor Shaffaq Mohammed, the Council's Lib Dem Cabinet member for Climate Change and Local Environment said: "Recycling is just one important part of our Waste Strategy that also includes action to reduce and reuse waste. However, given that the previous Labour administration had allowed Sheffield to have the lowest kerbside recycling service satisfaction rate of any major city and the rest of Yorkshire, we know that a transformation in this area is required. I'm confident that our plans will deliver this to ensure that we see a recycling revolution right across Sheffield."

The 2009/10 budget for waste management is currently just over £28 million, but the additional cost of the new proposals would be subject to contract negotiations with Veolia Environmental Services.