Why does the council use Bottle Banks instead of kerbside collection?
The Council currently collects glass for recycling by means of a network of 53 bottle banks located across the Borough. The glass which the council collects is sent for remelt and made into new bottles and jars. Our collected glass is a unique material which can be recycled indefinitely with no loss of quality and without requiring the addition of extra raw material. It is currently able to be sent for remelt and made into new glass bottles and jars. It can be back on the shelves within days of being collected! The tonnage of glass collected via the council’s network of banks has increased steadily each year, 2988 tonnes of glass was collected via the banks in 2021/22. This is increasing and a significant increase in tonnage was seen as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic driven by the closure of pubs and restaurants during lockdowns. Bottle banks produce the best quality recycling because if glass is co-mingled, or collected in orange bins with the rest of the recycling it is harder to recycle and can prevent the other materials in the bin from being recycled, particularly paper. Such glass may be sent to be reused as road surfacing instead of being recycled.
The last few years have seen a major update of Central Government waste policy. The Government’s aims and commitments have been outlined in the Resources and Waste Strategy 2018 and the recent Environment Bill. However, there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty over exactly how those aims will be delivered by Local Authorities in practice. The government is expected to introduce secondary legislation which will have considerable impact on the types and quantities of waste the Council is required to manage in the future, as well as how all that activity is funded. The Government may decide that all councils are required to recycle glass in a different way and there is a danger of Bedford Borough introducing a service which is later determined by Government differently. We do not support spending a significant sum of taxpayer’s money on introducing a new service until we know the government's requirements and how they will apportion funding. To offer a kerbside glass recycling service would entail the purchase of additional large collection of HGV vehicles and containers for households as well as additional staff to operate the vehicles. An estimate of the first year cost to operate a kerbside glass collection scheme for approximately 70,000 households would be in the region of £1.4m with an annual operating cost of approximately £500k each year thereafter.
At this moment we face this significant uncertainty regarding the government waste policy on packaging, bottle deposit return schemes and kerbside recycling. Given the high additional cost of operating such schemes, and the associated increase in carbon emissions for Council operations inherent in the introduction of such a service, it would be most unwise to introduce such a service at this time. We do however support the provision of a kerbside glass collection scheme when the government has eventually determined a national and consistent approach for all councils.
