Croydon steps up recycling effort

12:21pm Friday 15th February 2008

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Croydon Council has drawn up plans to radically increase recycling in the borough.

Specific attention will be paid to services for flats, the expansion of materials collected from kerbsides and an increase in the composting of organic waste.

�We hope to get recycling facilities running at every single block of flats in the borough, both council and privately owned. This is seen as one of the major targets of the proposal.�

Councillor Phil Thomas

The proposal outlines the need for Croydon households to rapidly increase the amount of waste that they recycle, with some of the main targets of the new strategy being council housing blocks.

Blocks of flats - housing multiple occupants and sometimes with an unusually high amount of affluent dwellers - are seen as a key target in the fight against climate change.

The council intends to have a collection system in place for all local authority housing in the borough by 2009 and to expand the collection service to include plastic and cardboard.

The initiative aims to put pressure on households to become more eco-friendly and on businesses producing the items destined for waste.

Croydon Council intends to lead by example and produce a sizeable amount of waste reduction in its own sites and departments.

It wants to recycle 60 per cent of its own waste this year and hopes to raise that figure to 80 per cent in the following 12 months.

The proposal aims to increase figures for the recycling and composting of household waste by 17 per cent in 2010 and improve promotion and awareness of green issues across the borough.

Councillor Phil Thomas, the council's recycling boss, said: "We have a mixed urban and suburban populace and getting all those people to recycle is hard.

"Money has been reprioritised from other sources but we must look at this as an investment. What costs us now will save in the future on the cost of depositing waste at landfill sites.

"We hope to get recycling facilities running at every single block of flats in the borough, both council and privately owned. This is seen as one of the major targets of the proposal."