Hundreds more residents to benefit from communal recycling

Residents in the London Road, Queens Park and Rottingdean Coastal wards will soon wave goodbye to their black boxes as new communal recycling bins are put in place.

By the end of this week (Friday 9 May) Brighton & Hove City Council will have installed the bins in 76 streets in the three wards, as part of Phase 5 of the communal recycling scheme.

Residents can start using the mixed recycling bins to recycle their plastic bottles, food and drink cans, cardboard and paper as soon as they arrive in their street.

The last black box collections will take place during the week beginning May 12.  As the scheme ends, residents can choose to keep their boxes to store their recycling or leave their empty boxes outside for the council to collect and re-use in other parts of the city.

Most of the communal bins, which will be emptied at least three times a week, have been placed alongside existing communal refuse bins to avoid taking up parking spaces. Locations of the glass recycling bins have been chosen to minimise problems with noise.

Residents helped decide where the bins should be located following feedback from the public consultation and exhibitions last year.

Cllr Pete West, chair of the environment, transport and sustainability committee said: “It’s great to see the new communal bins arriving in more areas of the city enabling many more residents to drop off their recycling whenever they like.”

He added that the new scheme will also see the end of black boxes cluttering pavements and doorsteps, and stop passers-by using them as bins, contaminating contents and causing wind-blown litter.

The introduction of the scheme is expected to bring big increases in recycling rates. A trial of over 3,000 homes in Brunswick and Adelaide during 2012, saw recycling rates rise from 12.5 per cent to 21 per cent.

The scheme is being funded with an £840,000 government grant to help councils improve waste collection and recycling services. The scheme is expected to result in savings of approximately £500k over 6 years.

The communal bin roll-out will be completed by the end of May and will eventually serve 32,000 city centre households from West Hove to East Brighton.