Background

Case Study

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City of London: Door to door collections of food and dry recycling from flatsRecycling collection arrangements for dry and food waste from flats

BackgroundThe first door to door recycling collection started on the Barbican Estate in 2002 for dry recycling and was carried out by the cleaning staff. The scheme was expanded to cover the Golden Lane Estate, Mansell Street Estate and Middlesex Street Estate in 2005.

The food waste collection scheme started as a 13-week pilot on the Middlesex Street estate in October 2006 and this was expanded to the Mansell Street and the Golden Lane estates in 2007. In 2008 it was further expanded to the Barbican Estate. Following on the success of the food waste collection service on these estates, the service was extended to privately managed blocks of flats that have bin stores.

Dry recycling

Food waste Comms Performance and future changes

DemographicsThe City of London is a unique authority with just 6,120 households. It is the oldest authority in the country, operating on a non-party political basis. Over 60% of residents in the City live in single person households with almost 10% of households not in use as a main residence compared to 0.51% for London as a whole. The Council have reported that this brings challenges in terms of communicating with residents who use properties more like hotel rooms than homes. It also bring perceived barriers to recycling, for example anecdotal feedback from residents is that they eat out a lot so do not produce enough waste to warrant recycling it.

According to Census data, 82% of households are within purpose built blocks of flats. There are three Council-run estates comprised entirely of blocks of flats: Barbican (1,985 households), Golden Lane (565 households), and Middlesex Street (198 households), and one housing association estate, Mansell Street (Guinness Trust, 194 households). There are also a number of privately managed blocks of flats.

The Barbican Estate

The Golden Lane Estate

Door to door collection scheme for dry recyclable materials The City of London operates a co-mingled “clear sack” recycling service for aerosols, aluminium foil, glass bottles and jars, paper and cardboard, cans, cartons, paper, plastic bottles, plastic containers and plastic wrappings.

Households included on the door to door collection scheme have a twice weekly collection which is carried out by Enterprise MRS, the waste collection contractor, with the exception of the Barbican, where cleaning staff collect recycling from the doorstep five times a week.

One dedicated member of the Enterprise crew collects the recycling using an adapted roll pallet trolley. On the Barbican estate, a trolley is also used for collection by the concierge. The materials collected are bulked in 1100 litre bins on site which can also used as recycling bring banks by residents to supplement the door to door collections. The bulk containers are then serviced by RCV’s as part of the scheduled household collections.

Delivery arrangements for clear sacks vary from block to block and arrangements include:• A one to one replacement. Operatives leave new

sacks in place of those set out• Blanket deliveries. Deliveries are arranged by the

Council every six months• On request deliveries. Residents can request a

delivery of sacks by contacting the City of London• Collection points: Residents can collect sacks from

estate offices or City libraries

City of London: Door to door collections of food and dry recycling from flats

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Case Study

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Dry recycling Food waste Comms Performance

and future changes

Background

Scheme variationsAll residents within the City have a dry recycling collection scheme, although, to cater for the different housing stock, various collection arrangements exist:• Properties without a bin store (e.g. flats in commercial

properties): a night time door to door recycling service operates five days a week (Monday to Friday) in conjunction with street cleansing

• Properties with a bin store: have recycling bins in the bin store and residents place their clear sacks in the recycling bins;

• Privately managed properties: the service varies from block to block and is dependant on the managing organisation

• Remaining blocks of flats: a door to door recycling collection operates for most blocks of flats

Dry recycling and food waste set out for collection

Door to door collection scheme for food wasteFlats with the food waste collection scheme are provided with a 5 litre vented caddy and compostable liners. A 10 litre solid side caddy and compostable liners or an extra 5 litre vented caddy are available to households upon request. All food waste (including meat) is accepted for collection.   The roll pallet trolley used to collect the dry recyclable materials has been adapted to collect food waste as well. Drawers have been added at the bottom of the pallet for the bagged food waste. These are then emptied into 240 litre wheeled food waste bins which are stored in the same area as the 100 litre bins for recycling and are collected using an RCV. Food waste is collected at the same time as dry recycling i.e. five times weekly on the Barbican estate and twice weekly on the other estates that receive a collection. The RCV’s transport the food waste to Bexley Council’s recycling centre in Crayford, South London where it is bulked with green and food waste collected in Bexley. The material is then sent to County Mulch in Ipswich for composting. City of London pay a gate fee of £80 per tonne.  

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City of London: Door to door collections of food and dry recycling from flats

Case Study

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Dry recycling

Food waste

Comms Performance and future changes

Background

5 litre vented kitchen caddy with liner

A trolley used to dry recycling with drawers for food waste

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Case Study

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Dry recycling

Food waste

Comms

Performance and future changes

Background

CommunicationsThe Council has employed a variety of communications tools to promote the dry recycling scheme and food waste collection scheme including: articles in the local press, attendance at residents’ meetings, door to door canvassing (including English/Bengali speaking canvassers), information on the website, school visits, mail drops etc. To provide residents with feedback on their participation in the food waste service, reminder cards are posted through the letter boxes of households who are not using the service properly (e.g. presenting contamination, liners not tied up etc.).

Since some blocks of flats have a high population of non-English speaking Bangladeshi residents dual-language leaflets have been developed by the authority. Pictorial communication materials are also used to communicate how the scheme should be used.

Pictorial guidance for using the food waste scheme which forms part of a food waste leaflet

Tips for using the food waste scheme which forms part of a food waste leaflet

City of London: Door to door collections of food and dry recycling from flats

Performance of the dry recycling schemeThe dry recycling door to door collection scheme appears to be one of the best performing systems for which WRAP has data for, collecting 4.25 kilograms of recycling per household per week. This relatively high performance may be partly due to the frequency of collection; most other systems for which data is available provide collections once per week.

Participation rates measured during 2012 range between 55% and 82% in different blocks indicating that the majority of residents are using the systems.

Contamination is low with very few recycling containers being rejected due to contamination. Feedback from the Materials Recovery Facility indicates that the contamination rate for dry recycling is 5%.

A small scale survey carried out in 2009 on residents in Shakespeare Tower (part of the Barbican Estate) identified that 62% of the 68 residents responding to the survey claimed to use the food waste scheme.

Performance of the food waste schemeMonitoring carried out on all four estates in the City of London in 2012 shows that:• participation in the scheme varies between 12%-39% • approximately 31 kilograms per household per year of food

waste is collected • contamination is minimal

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Changes to the collection arrangements

• Following participation monitoring undertaken in early 2012 the City of London will be working with WRAP to identify how deliveries of dry recycling and food waste liners could be improved.

• A re-launch of the food waste scheme is being considered for privately managed blocks of flats. This would focus on refurbishing recycling sites and literature.

• With the expansion of the food waste scheme to cover all households, residents on the Golden Lane and Middlesex Street estates no longer receive one for one replacement clear sacks for dry recyclables, as this has proved to slow the collection time. Residents are now receiving deliveries every six months, or are able to collect replacement sacks from the estate office.

• Following fire safety inspections, the City of London concluded that in blocks of flats where there is only one means of escape and where sacks were placed in a communal single escape route leading to the escape staircase, door to door collections of dry recyclables needed to be discontinued. This lead to the door to door collection scheme being withdrawn from 20 flats in Guinness Court and replaced with a bring bank mini-recycling centre located outside the block of flats.

Case Study

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Dry recycling

Food waste Comms

Performance and future changes

Background

City of London: Door to door collections of food and dry recycling from flats

Waste & Resources Action Programme

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