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Waste and recycling manager Pete Baveystock: 'On target'
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5,000 sign up for green waste collection

May 01, 2012

More than 5,000 people in Wokingham have signed up to the borough’s new green waste collection service.

The fortnightly service was rolled out earlier this month and Wokingham Borough Council says it is on track to reach its target of getting between 8,000 and 10,000 people to sign up in the first year.

So far just over 5,000 people have requested to have a brown wheelie bin. The council had originally ordered 20,000 bins, however this order had been cut back to 10,000.

Pete Baveystock, waste and recycling manager, said: “I think it has been okay. I would always like the figure to be higher but we are on target as our estimate was 8,000.”

The green waste collection service costs households £60 a year for a brown bin, which some people have branded a “stealth tax”.

Mr Baveystock said: “It is a price that reflects the cost of the whole service. Some councils do subsidise the service but we felt the user should pay.”

Homeowners can also opt for paper sacks, priced at £1 each, as an alternative to the brown bin and so far around 2,000 sacks have been sold. The council has also been working to deliver correct size blue bin bags to homes issued with incorrect bags.

Each household received 80 bags as standard and larger families of five or more will be able to apply for extra bags from next month when forms will be sent out. Households of five or more can apply for a further 20 bags and families of six or more can get an extra 40 bags.

As part of the new waste and recycling scheme, homeowners can earn rewards, including vouchers for local shops, cinemas and sports facilities, for recycling by registering with the free Recyclebank scheme.

As well as a 300 points bonus for registering, each week households earn 10 points for their recycling efforts by telling Recyclebank either online, by phone or using an app.

Recyclebank would not reveal how many people in the borough have so far registered with the scheme.

A spokeswoman for Recyclebank said: “Recyclebank is very pleased with the progress and registration numbers they have seen in the borough to date and will announce full registration numbers after the scheme has been implemented for three months.”

To redeem points or find out more, call 0844 409 9490 or visit www.recyclebank.com

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ITs all about money. 5000 people at £60 pounds a year.. Well done council for taking more money when we area already one of the highest council taxes . Wont even talk about the price of bags.

And who are the people dumb enough to re elect the conservatives again after doing this mess?

YoYo-Sindlesham, Sindlesham
04/05/2012 at 12:55

OK, so I'm now concerned about the competency of planners in WBC after this story. No wonder councils are bleeding cash. Two quotes sum it up:

1. " The council had originally ordered 20,000 bins...." and 2. Pete Baveystock, waste and recycling manager, said: “...... we are on target as our estimate was 8,000".

Go figure.

Dave S., Barkham
02/05/2012 at 17:35

today i went to the offices of wokingham borough council to buy some brown paper bags for garden waste. you go to one place give your details then you receive a ticket.you then go to another part of the building where you have your ticket taken from you. after a while you receive your bags,£10 for ten(yes £10).why do wokingham council make simple things so difficult,its like they are creating jobs for each other.well done wokingham borough council, keep up the good work.ps dont forget to vote tomorrow.

right said fred
02/05/2012 at 15:55

The comments section on this article has been broken for me all day - let's try again.

The recyclebank thing is a complete scam. It has nothing to do with recycling and everything to do with getting your details to market stuff at you in the form of "vouchers". It is so out-sourced it has lost any kind of connection with the thing you should be being rewarded for. As a system for rewarding people for recycling, it is entirely based on honesty, a trust that is regularly abused when it is offered. This just shows how little it has to do with recycling and that it is just a completely separate marketing company's venture that the council is supporting.

I won't be giving out my details, but I will continue to recycle everything I can because it is the right thing to do. I do wish this council would stop selling us this thing as a good idea as if we're children. It's a complete balls-up, and I will be making sure that is known with my piddly little vote this month.

mavdo, Wokingham
01/05/2012 at 17:36

Andy - I suspect that the £300,000 raised will be spent on policing fly-tipping of green waste :(

timjnx
01/05/2012 at 17:32

So 5,000 are now continueing to recycle green waste (probaly hard up OAPs in the main who can do nothing else). The other 15,000 have stopped doing so! That is considered a success by WBC?? Tell me how doubling the cost of collecting recycling from black boxes is sensiible (we used to put out 4 boxes every fortnight whereas now we put out 2 each week!). These people live in a world where making extra work and keeping themselves employed is the real target. The cost of the service has been cut by 10% and the standard of service by 50%. Wonderful!!

Silver Royal, Woodley
01/05/2012 at 16:55

PoneRana - were you happy with the recycling prior to April? i.e. when it was collected fortnightly? I didn't hear anyone complaining about a fortnightly collection then. My point is therefore that if recycling was kept as a fortnightly collection (as previously), then this would free up resource and money to do green waste collection. The current situation (according to the stats provided by WBC) is that recycling is up 10%. If that is the case they are currently putting in 100% more effort and resource than previously for a minimal gain. It therefore isn't such a stupid idea and as recycling should be clean and not smell, the only real issue with fortnightly collections is storage space.

Smiffy, Reading
01/05/2012 at 16:31

£60 a year for garden bin recycling is a joke! Especially when other councils are only charging around £30 for an identical service (eg: Bracknell - oh... and it goes to the same place!).

So let's take a close look. I personally don't tend to recycle much rubbish from Nov - Feb, so that takes us straight down to 8 months a year of potential re-cycling. And with collections only every 2 weeks, that becomes 4 months to base our calculation on.

So 4 months is approx 17 weeks (accounting for 1 5-week month). £60 / 17 = £3.52 per collection!! And that's assuming that it's been dry enough to mow the lawn for each of those weeks.

I Live Here!, Right Here!
01/05/2012 at 15:50

Mr Baveystock has a big smile on his face; could it be because he's managed to get 5000 mugs to pay extra rip off tax? I too would smile if I could get 5000 mugs to each pay sixty pounds for something that was already paid for and provided previously.

PoneRana makes a good point; as an elderly disabled man with an elderly wife, we find it difficult to recycle glass etc. Neither of us drive and we don't go to the big supermarkets where the glass recycling facilities are. We shop locally daily and at markets; less packaging and fresher food.

Tonk, Wokingham
01/05/2012 at 13:09

Andy - they'll waste it on providing a service to just 5,000 people that they used to provide to the whole borough.

D. M.
01/05/2012 at 12:20

Where does this stupid idea that recycling needs to be collected less frequently than other waste come from? I generate twice as much waste for recycling than waste going to landfill. With a little more imagination so that tetra packs and glass was collected this proportion could be improved even more.

The elderly amongst us who use public transport to do their shopping find it difficult to use the bottle banks.

PoneRana, Wokingham
01/05/2012 at 12:20

We've been 'forced' into the bin route, sharing with neighbours. Not overly happy but biggest gripe is the colour, why not a nice green rather than a brown that reminds me of another type of waste product.

Friday's child, Reading
01/05/2012 at 11:24

Maybe that is why the phone lines were so busy at the start of April - I am sure only a few weeks ago 1,000 people had got brown bins and now it is 5,000. I wonder if if Recyclebank have some sort of gagging clause so they can't give out details as WBC only work in round numbers (with the 10% increase in recycling and 10% decrease in waste collection), so the numbers they publish are to the nearest 5000!

I wonder how the paper sacks are doing in this weather!!

Mr Baveystock - you wouldn't need to charge £60 if you did a really sensible thing - week 1 collect recycling, week 2 collect green waste and then keep using this logic for subsequent weeks. As I have said numerous times, surely the weekly recycling is overkill and the cost saved in doing a fortnightly recycling collection would massively subsidise the green waste collection.

Smiffy, Reading
01/05/2012 at 11:19

And yet there are still people on twitter complaining that they have not yet got their bin

Andy Shaw
01/05/2012 at 11:09

The lady in the background does not seem to approve of Pete's antics with the bin!

No surprise that the Recyclebank sign-up figures have not been published.

And the quote: "Our estimate was 8,000" for the garden wheelie bins so WBC were going to order 20,000 originally. Fail.