Two separate meassages from the ops manager at Recycle360"Due to breakdowns/workload we do often send out a caged tipper to remove card from rounds that might run late, or to known to have heavy card loads to enable them to stay out longer. Its brought back to Southall Lane Depot for recycling of course"It's worth recording that domestic waste and recycling volumes are a great deal higher due to people being at home during the pandemic - and a lot more goods arriving in heavy cardboard boxes."The card and paper does all go into the blue container, but we have separate compartments on the vehicle - residents are encouraged to keep the two separate as best they can in their box, as our staff do not have sufficient time to segregate piece by piece, not least as the compartments are not next to each other. While its OK that paper goes in card and card goes in paper, we get a better value for 'purer' streams of each. In an alternative world we'd consider another container for one of those materials - but then there'd be e.g. 80,000 more boxes to be supplied, emptied, returned, lost, damaged, replaced, contaminated etc - which would slow us down, lead to need for more crews, more vehicles on the road and more cost that would not be justified by the margins to be gained."All of it gets recycled, so whilst we do our best to get pure streams it's mainly a financial concern.I'm very proud of our waste and recycling service. Unlike many councils we have maintained a complete, uninterrupted service throughout the pandemic. Complaints about quality of service are down on previous years and range between 16 and 50 per month - on more than half a million collections each month. Missed collections are well ahead of industry benchmarks and recycling rates slowly increasing.
Guy Lambert ● 25d