BBC South East’s Inside Out programme last night (17 February) profiled the current debate over frequency of residual waste collections, and their impact on recycling.

Broadcast last night at 7.30pm, reporter Rachel Royce (pictured below) travelled to Ashford in Kent to see how the borough council has turned around its recycling figures.

She outlined how the council’s new recycling system with waste management company Biffa (introduced in July 2013) has helped to boost its household recycling rates from 12 per cent to 56 per cent.

She reported: “Many councils, including Ashford, have abolished the weekly general rubbish collection, as part of a push to get people recycling… People used to put out their rubbish once a week. Now they have a wheelie bin for rubbish and a wheelie bin for recycling, each one is picked up on alternate weeks” (Biffa’s service also includes a weekly food waste collection).

She attributed the rise in recycling to the efficacy of the co-mingled recycling system, saying: “Ashford’s rubbish revolution is having impressive results – the residents have gone from being the worst in the country for recycling, to amongst the best, simply because they can put pretty much all their recycling in one bin.”

Speaking to Councillor Jessamy Blandford, portfolio holder for environment at Ashford Borough Council, Royce heard that despite residents experiencing “quite a lot of anxiety” when the scheme was introduced, “they’ve all taken to [it] very well”.

Indeed, when talking to residents about how they feel about the system, Royce heard how “most of the stuff actually does go in the recycling, other than the nappies. So no, it’s not been a problem”.

Visiting Biffa’s material recovery facility (MRF) in North London, where Ashford sends its “unwanted items like milk bottles and fizzy drink cans”, Royce outlined how a “mixture of technology and hands-on, intensive labour, means that around 92 per cent of Ashford’s dry waste can be separated and graded into raw materials”.

David Heaton, General Manager for Biffa Atlas, then explained: “This is the final quality control before we make it into bales so we can send it off for reprocessing. The aluminium goes to be reprocessed in the UK into new cans, plastics we take to our own plant where it gets made into food-grade plastic flakes, paper from here mainly goes to China, because there isn’t capacity in the UK to take all that is made.”

Pickles ‘doesn’t like what Ashford’s doing’

After visiting the MRF, Royce highlighted that despite Ashford’s success, there is “one person who doesn’t like what Ashford’s doing”: Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles.

She said: “[Pickles] thinks every council should have a general rubbish collection once a week. It was one of his pronouncements in the so-called ‘Bin Bible’” (which offered advice to councils on how to collect rubbish). Indeed, Pickles was on a recent episode of The One Show voicing his support for weekly collections, despite the fact that alternate weekly collections (AWC) of residual waste have been credited with producing higher recycling rates.

Speaking for the government department, Brandon Lewis MP, Minister for Local Government said: “What we want to see is people getting back to that core thing that councils are there for. The Secretary of State Eric Pickles is very clear, and I think he’s absolutely right: When we pay our Council Tax we want good local services… And what are the key things we want to see? We want our rubbish collected and our streets kept clean, and having our rubbish collected weekly and having that waste not hanging around on the streets, not stuck in our gardens, not flytipping in some areas, is a really important part of what we pay our Council Tax for.”

When asked if councils using AWC are therefore ‘not doing the right thing’, Lewis said: “They’re not necessarily got it wrong, it’s just not the only way to do it. And I would argue if they made the recycling easy and encourage people to do it, they could go look at going back to weekly waste collections as well as recycling, and maybe still keep those figures up.”

However, Councillor Blandford said: “I have read the ‘Bin Bible’, and I must say it’s a very curious document. Our bins are barely full so there’s no point in collecting every week.”

Indeed, Dr Adam Read from environmental consultancy Ricardo-AEA (and billed by the BBC as a ‘recycling expert’) added: “If you only collect [residual waste] every two weeks, you make the public take [responsibility] for their behaviour and their consumer patterns.”

Inside Out then profiled nearby Lewis District Council (which was awarded £2 million in Pickles’s fund for weekly collections), and how it runs its service.

It showed how residents separate out their waste in different boxes for recycling (one for paper; one for glass; one for cardboard; one for plastic bottles, cans and tin foil; and lastly, one for food waste) for fortnightly collections, and how the council collects residual waste once a week in ‘eco-friendly electric vehicles’.

Royce notes that despite the ‘efforts of people’ [in separating out their recyclable materials], Lewis doesn’t have ‘great recycling rates’, and only recycles around a quarter of its waste.

But Councillor Paul Franklin, Lead Member for Waste and Recycling at Lewis District Council said relying on recyling figures to demostrate a council’s efficacy in waste management can be misleading, adding: “Lewis District has the lowest waste per head in the country and we have a large amount of extra promotions that aren’t even included in our figures. For example, incentives for community groups to save things… it’s a much more complex issue rather than just having a few straightforward figures.”

Signing off, Royce refrained from passing judgment on which service was more effective, simply adding: “Rubbish collection is a vital and visible service. People soon notice if their bins are overflowing because they haven’t been emptied. But everyone is keen to increase recycling, so how often the rubbish is collected has become a bone of contention.”

Yesterday’s Inside Out programme is available on BBC iPlayer until Monday, 24 February.