Recycling centres to maintain 7-days-a-week opening for time being

Household recycling centres in Shropshire will maintain their regular week-long opening hours for the next six months, a meeting has been told.

All of the authority’s five recycling centres are set to reduce their opening hours to six days per week as part of changes designed to reduce costs in the council’s recycling operation.

But an agreement with council waste contractors Veolia will underwrite the costs of maintaining seven days per week opening for a period of six months while Shropshire Council gets its booking system up and running.

The changes, part of council-wide measures designed to save the authority £62 million this year, also include the introduction of a new booking system for visits to recycling centres which the council hopes will reduce the amount of trade waste brought onto sites.

During a meeting of the council’s scrutiny committee on Friday (September 6), council waste management officer Mark Foxall said the council would be carrying out data collection on visits to the sites to determine the level of cost saving generated by the move to introduce a booking system.

“As part of the ongoing discussion with Veolia they have agreed to underwrite the cost of keeping all the sites open for seven days a week for an initial six month period, and that’s really to allow the booking system to bed in and to see the impact of that,” he said.

“Part of the rationale for the booking system is to squeeze out traders bringing materials that shouldn’t be there and there’s a thought that if that generates the quantum of savings anticipated then maybe we could keep all the sites open seven days a week.

“We know that we get numerous traders depositing waste at those facilities for which they’re paid a fee for doing, and they should be paying for the lawful disposal of that and it shouldn’t funded by the council tax payers overall, which is the current system.”

The issue was raised as part of a wide ranging discussion on the council’s waste minimisation strategy, designed to reduce the amount of waste processed by Shropshire Council by around 20%.

The scheme includes a number of measures to reduce the amount of waste entering the system, including the introduction of a charge for collecting green waste and the introduction of recycling permits at household recycling centres.

Longden Councillor Roger Evans described the council’s minimisation policy as “ill thought out” and “late in coming forward”, and said insufficient time had been allowed for proper scrutiny of the measures.

But Councillor Ian Nellins, portfolio holder for Climate Change, Environment and Transport, said the move to introduce a booking system would deter people bringing in waste from out of the county – leading to a cost saving for Shropshire Council tax payers.

“Most of our recycling centres are on the periphery of the local authority area so we know there’s a large amount of recycling comes in from Powys, Cheshire and Staffordshire. The booking system will help to reduce a lot of that,” he said.

“The more stuff we throw out the more expensive it is for the council to deal with, the more we recycle the better it is for us. So it’s getting that point across to residents that we need their help.”