Recycling bins for Guildford as £4m spend agreed

RECYCLING of household waste in Guildford is to get a major overhaul after councillors agreed to pump nearly £4million into a new service.

Wheeled bins for recyclables will be rolled out after Guildford Borough Council (GBC) set an ambitious new target to recycle 70 per cent of household waste by 2015.

Garden waste subscribers will also see a change to their service from April 2013, when brown wheeled bins will replace the current green bags.

A new fleet of waste collection vehicles which collect refuse, recyclables and food waste in a single lorry will be introduced. The new vehicles will allow 4,000 residents who use sacks for recycling to change over to wheeled bins.

Food waste will continue to be collected in caddies.

A new service, likely to be popular among residents, will be the ability to recycle waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). From November, any electronic item with a plug or batteries that fits into a standard carrier bag will be collected from the kerbside at the same time as refuse.

The rest of the changes to the recycling service will be in place by October 2013, with the cost of bins and new vehicles expected to be £3.9m.

GBC said it expects annual savings of nearly £500,000 and will also avoid potential capital costs of around £1.6 million as the new service requires fewer vehicles.

Cllr Nick Sutcliffe, lead councillor for environmental services, said: "A total of 20,000 tonnes of household waste a year goes to landfill sites from Guildford residents – enough to fill more than six Olympic-sized swimming pools. We need to do more to reduce what we throw away and the introduction of wheeled bins will make it easier for residents to recycle by removing the need for sorting.

"Wheeled bins will also mean items are less likely to blow away or be scattered by wildlife and they also hold more."

Councillors agreed to the changes at a GBC Executive meeting on Thursday October 4.