Municipal contractor, Biffa, is expanding its chargeable Green Waste Club (GWC) to provide a garden waste collection and recycling service for Herefordshire residents, specifically in Hereford, Ledbury, Leominster, Bromyard and Ross-on-Wye.
Since marketing began in late June, approaching 1,000 new members have been registered, while since July, Biffa’s GWC crew has been active delivering wheeled bins and making first collections. Nearly 45 tonnes of garden waste have already been diverted from landfill.
For less than £5 a month (excluding a small one-off initial charge for bin delivery), GWC members get their own dedicated 240 litre wheeled bin for collecting lawn and hedge clippings, leaf fall, prunings, small branches and the like. Every fortnight, bins are emptied into Biffa’s dedicated 26-tonne GWC recycling collection truck, and the contents taken for processing into compost.
Herefordshire is Biffa’s seventh Green Waste Club, joining Arun (where the service was first launched in 2005), Surrey Heath, Melton, Tandridge, Portsmouth and East Northamptonshire. The current membership stands at nearly 60,000, and over 150,000 tonnes of green waste have so far been recycled into compost and soil conditioner.
Roger Edwards, managing director of Biffa’s municipal division, said the Herefordshire launch marks a ‘determined expansion’ of the GWC service. “It’s the right time to do so,” he explained, citing a recent prediction by the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) that all local authorities in England will be charging residents for garden waste collections within five years.
According to Edwards, this forecast represents a ‘significant opportunity’ for setting up more Green Waste Clubs as councils seek to cut costs. “For a hard-pressed local authority, agreeing to the creation of a local Green Waste Club is a logical decision,” he said. “Biffa takes all the operational and financial risk, while residents receive a cost-effective and efficient service.”