Hull in print : Feature

Brown bins will soon be a common sight across the city.
Between now and Christmas, if your house has a garden, you'll receive one from Hull City Council's Waste Management Team.
You can put garden and kitchen waste into it, including grass and hedge cuttings, and any waste food product, raw or cooked, such as plate scrapings and fruit and veg peelings.
What's more, you'll also get a small kitchen caddy (pictured below) as well as compostable liners to put inside it. This will help you move your food waste from the kitchen to your brown bin.

Rubbish message

But if you don't have a garden (and therefore don't have any garden waste to recycle) you'll receive a larger outdoor caddy instead of a brown bin in which you can just recycle kitchen waste.
And you'll still get the same small caddy and compostable liners to move your food waste from your kitchen into your larger outdoor caddy.
Confused? There's no need to be.
"The new bins and caddies are simple to use and we hope that as many residents as possible will very quickly get into the swing of using them," says Cllr Dave Woods, who is responsible for recycling in the city.
"At present, around 50 per cent of all household waste in Hull is made up of garden and kitchen waste, so these bins and caddies will be vital in helping us reach our recycling targets.
"We'll send the waste to make compost, and in doing so we'll reduce the amount of waste we put in landfill, which is harming the environment."

New blue bins

The introduction of brown bins, which have already been trialled in some parts of the city, is part of the council's new £9 million waste collection system.
Under the new system, you will also be given a brand new, 240-litre blue wheelie bin, which replaces both the smaller blue wheelie bin which you currently have and your black box.
To put it simply...you'll be able to put in your new blue bin all the things you would normally have put in your old blue bin and black box.
That's things like newspapers and magazines, food and drink cans, and glass and plastic bottles and jars. You can also put in cardboard, such as cereal packets and toilet rolls, as well as other plastic like tubs, bags, margarine and yoghurt pots.
But you can't put in textiles – these should be bagged separately and left next to your blue bins on collection day.
"By merging the black box and blue bin schemes, and just having one large blue wheelie bin, we're hoping to make recycling more user-friendly and to encourage more residents to recycle," says Cllr Woods.
"One of the problems with the old system, for example, was that residents had to lift the black boxes, which was quite difficult when they were full, especially for the elderly."
The contents of the new blue bins will be taken away and sorted by a Materials Reclamation Facility (MRF), a specialised centre that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials.

Three of a kind

So you're going to have a new brown bin, and a new, bigger, blue bin...so what's the third bin going to be?
Well, residents will be keeping their current black
240-litre wheeled bins.
"They can put in everything that won't go in the other bins," says Cllr Woods. "But if people are recycling, there shouldn't be a lot left over for the black bin!"
"This is about all residents making an effort and taking responsibility for the welfare of the environment, not just for today, but for future generations.
"As a council, we're doing our bit, and it's up to residents to do theirs."

Tough targets

Hull currently recycles 28 per cent of its household waste, but must recycle 45 per cent by 2010.
Otherwise the council will face hefty fines from the Government, plus landfill taxes, which could result in service cuts in other areas.
Hull currently buries the equivalent of more than 10,000 double-decker buses in landfill every year – and that's harming the environment, because the decomposing waste gives off methane gas which causes global warming. Toxins can also poison the soil and leak into the water table.

Centres of recycling

The good news is that the amount of waste Hull sends to landfill has already reduced by 20 per cent since the introduction of the city's four household waste recycling centres.
The centres are places where you can take anything that cannot be recycled in your new bins, from batteries to old fridges to drink cartons. You can still take all your other rubbish there too.
The centres are at:

Burma Drive, off Marfleet Lane
Sutton Fields, on Amsterdam Road
Wilmington, off Stoneferry roundabout
Wiltshire Road, near the Hessle Road flyover

info

All residents will be provided with the new waste bins free of charge between September and Christmas.
Residents who have requested the council's assisted waste collection service will continue to receive this service.
The old blue wheelie bins will be collected by the council, but residents will be allowed to keep their black boxes for storage (what will you do with yours? See competition on page 23).
For more information call 300300 or visit www.hullcc.gov.uk


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