New Waste Contract for Epping starts today
New waste contractor plans to recycle even more
Today, newly-appointed contractor Biffa Municipal will start collecting Epping Forest’s household recycling and refuse, heralding some changes to help the district recycle even more.
These changes won’t alter Epping Forest’s well-proven system of 2 wheeled bins (1 for refuse, the other for food and garden waste), recycling sacks (for ‘dry’ recyclables like paper, cardboard, metal cans and plastic containers) and a blue box (for glass containers), or collection frequencies.
Biffa, whose 40-plus local authority clients include some of England’s best recycling authorities, starts work on Monday 3 November 2014, there will be one immediate change – residents will be able to add food and drink cartons (commonly known as tetrapaks) to their recycling sacks.
A bigger change comes next April when Biffa will start what are known as ‘one pass’ collections. Made possible by new, more efficient, collection vehicles that have 2 separate compartments, the one pass service will collect both dry recyclables and glass containers together every fortnight, providing a same day, same time, collection for all dry recyclables.
This will mean fewer collection vehicles, less traffic congestion, and lower vehicle emissions.
April 2015 will also see the start of a new weekly service to collect small items of waste domestic electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) such as irons, kettles, toasters, audio equipment etc. All residents need do is put their small WEEE in plastic bags alongside their mixed food and garden waste bin, and Biffa will take care of the rest.
There is no change to fortnightly collections of refuse in wheeled bins.
From next May, Biffa will deliver 100 clear recycling sacks every year to every Epping Forest household, enough for an average of 2 recycling sacks each fortnight. Residents needing more clear sacks will still be able to collect them from the usual outlets.
Councillor Will Breare-Hall, Environment Portfolio Holder for Epping Forest District Council said: “Epping Forest already has an excellent recycling record, thanks to the efforts and commitment of our residents. We’re asking them to help Epping Forest become one of England’s best by supporting the service changes we’re introducing with Biffa.
“From November, residents can add tetrapaks to their recycling sacks, and from next April they can put small waste electrical and electronic equipment out for collection by Biffa. It’s that simple.”
Liz Talbot, Biffa Municipal’s local business manager, who will oversee more than 100 staff providing recycling and refuse collections and street cleansing in Epping Forest, said: “For months, the Biffa team has been preparing for its new contract, and is confident that the planned changes can help residents to divert even more waste towards recycling.”
According to the 2012-13 Defra recycling tables, Epping Forest’s recycling rate is just over 58%, 15th best in England. Biffa’s plans for diverting more household waste to recycling, reuse and composting should help push that rate to over 60%, hopefully putting Epping Forest in the top 10.
Last year, nearly 51,500 tonnes of domestic waste were collected from the district’s 54,000 properties, of which 30,279 tonnes of materials were sent for recycling, composting or reuse.
Information leaflets about Epping Forest’s recycling and refuse collections are being delivered to all 54,000 households in the district
