It is with a mixed sense of admiration and disbelief that many of us greet the description of Kamikatsu’s waste collection system: admiration because residents of this small village in Japan are clearly serious about zero waste; and disbelief because it seems impossible that they are willing (and have the time and patience) to compost their food waste and separate the remaining household waste into no less than 34 different categories at their local recycling centre. Surely such a scheme would never work in the UK (and no local authority would dare implement it…).

While Newcastle-under-Lyme’s new recycling service falls 26 containers short of Kamikatsu’s, the authority recently took a bold step in the zero waste model’s direction by asking residents to sort their recyclables into eight separate containers for kerbside collection. As of March this year, residents in the borough’s 54,000 homes must sort plastic, paper, cardboard, metals and glass, textiles, garden waste, and food waste into seven distinct receptacles, with a further bin for residual waste, making this recycling scheme the most complicated in the UK.

Trevor Nicoll, Head of Waste Strategy at Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, explains the new system: “It’s an alternate weekly collection service. On one week, our ‘green’ week, we collect food waste from a small 25-litre green bin, garden waste from a 240-litre brown wheeled bin and residual waste from a 180-litre black wheeled bin. We use three different collection vehicles on this week. And on our ‘blue’ week, which is for dry recycling and food waste, we use two vehicles. We collect the food waste again, in the green caddy, as well as cardboard in a green reusable bag, plastic bottles in a red one-use sack, paper and magazines in a reusable blue bag. Then we have mixed glass, tins and foil in a blue box and textiles in a white and red sack.”

In total, the council uses five different types of collection vehicles for the nine different types of material, another number that might raise an eyebrow or two, but, according to Nicoll: “By using different types of vehicles that fitted the types of materials we were collecting, that saved us having to make extra tips either to the transfer station or the incinerator. Food, green, and residual waste all go to different locations [an anaerobic digester in the case of food waste], so that’s why on one week, there’s three different vehicles. Also, we’re using the right sized vehicles for the materials – food waste is dense, heavy material, so we actually only need 6.5-tonne vehicles that run a lot more efficiently than a 26-tonne refuse collection vehicle.”

The council has provided residents with kerbside collections for seven years now, although households previously only had to contend with two bins – general rubbish and garden waste – and two bags and a box for dry recyclables. The introduction of the new eight-container scheme raises a number of issues, not least the amount of space that the system takes up. While eight containers can be easily accommodated in a semi-detached property with a large garden, one would think residents in terraced houses or gardenless flats might have trouble.

However, Nicoll explains that the issue of space was, in fact, one of the main reasons this particular system was chosen. “This system will take up less space than having a wheelie bin that’s always there, because when we’ve collected, some of the bags disappear and others can be stacked into the blue box until they’re needed again.” He adds that this system can be adjusted to fit in with the needs of various households: “We wanted to design a system which could be scaleable, to fit in better with those residents in terraced properties, but one that also works well for those families with six or seven members. In this way, our system works because larger families can have additional boxes and bags if they need them.”

The success of such a complex scheme is, of course, dependent on the willingness of residents to take part. And, somewhat surprisingly to some outside observers, the citizens of Newcastle seem largely willing to do their bit. In fact, since the inception of the new scheme, recycling rates have jumped from 26 per cent to over 55 per cent. Phil Corrigan, chief reporter for local newspaper The Sentinel has been speaking to the residents about the new scheme and confirms: “For the most part, people are perfectly content with the new system and happy to recycle. They appreciate the reasons behind changing the system and understand that if the council doesn’t meet its recycling targets, it could be fined and their council tax will increase as a result.”

However, he adds that there has been some negative feedback from a few of the residents: “What annoys people is when the system doesn’t work properly, such as when the bins aren’t collected on the right day.” The occasional disgruntled resident has even taken to The Sentinel’s website to vent his or her frustrations, leaving posts such as: ‘We need a GCSE to understand [the bin days] and must attend a course at the local college to figure out what colour, what bin and with what colour week – if it was a diet we would die of starvation as we wouldn’t know what to eat.’

The level of confusion is surprisingly low, though, and this is due to a large campaign with funding from WRAP. “We’ve spent quite a lot of time talking to residents and sending out leaflets to them to help them understand how the service works”, says Nicoll. “In addition to this we have had two recycling officers, also funded by WRAP, who spent the first two weeks of the service in the market square, speaking to residents and explaining what’s going on and what they need to do.”

No service overhaul can be without its hitches and Nicoll acknowledges that “there have been a few teething problems”, but insists they’re “just general service change issues that have been mostly resolved now”. He explains that the overhaul involved more than just adding a few containers: “We changed people’s collection day, we changed the vehicles we were collecting the materials in, we also added materials to the collection service and introduced green waste, all over the space of a fortnight.”

And, despite any initial problems the council may have experienced, Nicoll is confident that the system it has chosen is the right one and that it will continue to be successful: “It’s actually something that will work in the longer term, unlike the ‘easy’ way of commingled recycling. It’s just a case of working with residents to create a sustainable approach for the future.”

Indeed, recent evidence has shown that more and more councils across the country are opting for source-separated collections in the hunt for quality material, and Newcastle’s eight-container system just might be the logical step in the drive for high-value recyclate. “The reason such a system was introduced, as opposed to a commingled system, is that it allows the waste to be used as a high-grade material”, Nicoll says. “We wanted to collect high-quality recyclables that are completely usable, rather than collecting huge volumes of mixed materials which then get rejected at the MRF [materials recovery facility]. Every piece of recyclable material we collect is recycled.”

Whether or not other councils will follow in Newcastle-under-Lyme’s footsteps remains to be seen. Joy Blizzard, Chair of LARAC, the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, for one, wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility: “If quality really is king”, she says, “then this is sometimes what we have to look at doing… It wouldn’t surprise me if this developed as a trend because we have to make sure that we’ve learnt our lesson from the markets collapsing for low-quality materials. In any case, having that many bins is a valuable lesson to residents to understand just how much waste gets created!” So then, who’s going to take it one step further – do we hear nine bins, anyone?