Torridge District Council has announced that it will resume recycling services to its 31,500 households from Monday (13 July), two weeks after services stopped following the ‘sudden and immediate’ closure of its collections contractor, South Molton Recycling.

On 29 June the waste company announced that it was entering administration, leading to the loss of 30 jobs, and leaving the council without the ability to collect and process kerbside recycling. (However, recyclables were still being accepted at some of the council’s civic amenity sites, and residual waste and organic waste collections were unaffected).

According to the council, a number of vehicles have been acquired to operate the scheme, which will employ 13 local workers. Collections will continue on a weekly basis as before, and will collect all of the same materials on the same days, utilising the same recycling receptacles.

These are:

• green box: glass bottles and jars; plastic bottles; metal tins, cans, foil, and aerosols; and household batteries.
• green bag: paper; shoes; linen.
• brown bag: cardboard; and
• carrier bags: waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

Switch from kerbside sort to MRF separation

Although the front-end of the service is the same, the council will now longer be operating a kerbside-sort system, instead sending all materials to a materials recovery facility (MRF) for separation. It has not yet been confirmed which MRF will be handling the materials.

The council stated: ‘Plans have been put in place to re-start collections on the same days and for the same materials as were previously collected. The only difference that residents will notice is that materials will not be sorted at the kerbside but later by a reprocessor. This allows for a much smoother and quicker collection method with the separation and grading of materials occurring at a later stage.’

The council added that although the vehicles will be unbranded and look like standard refuse vehicles for the first few weeks, ‘none of the materials collected will go to landfill’.

In addition to the kerbside collections, the council will also be rolling out more bring site facilities to support recycling before the scheme is formally rolled out next week.

'Really pleased that everyone has rallied together'

Speaking of the new collection service, Councillor James Morrish, Deputy Leader of Torridge District Council, said: "This is fantastic news following the totally unexpected and unprecedented cessation of collections forced on the Council just over a week ago. None of this would have been possible without the cooperation and support of our residents, who have really shown great patience, understanding and commitment to helping us during this difficult period. Bring sites have been well used and it really shows the extra effort people have made to continue recycling and protecting the environment."

Verna Green, Torridge District Council Manager for Services, added: "I am really pleased that everyone has rallied together, which has allowed us to reintroduce kerbside recycling collections back into the district so quickly. We will now move forward to assessing a process for assisted collections and distribution of bags and boxes for new residents, but this should quickly follow in the coming weeks."

Find out more about the new service.