Birmingham City Council’s response to Spring Campaign

February 23, 2010 at 12:31 PM · Filed under Recycling Campaign

Following on from the email I received from LARAC, I attempted to find an email address for the part of Birmingham City Council that would deal with this scheme, the only one I could find though was a simple “Contact us” email address. So instead I decided to phone them directly, using the number provided by LARAC on their website that would put me in contact with their waste minimization officer, Phil Brook.

At first there was confusion as I didn’t realise that the campaign was headed by WRAP which I thought was part of LARAC, instead it is a totally different organisation funded by the government and Phil helpfully provided information on the difference between the two bodies. I asked him a number of questions concerning the campaign and their door step recycling scheme which is was happy to answer.

My first question was whether they had any prior warning about this campaign to allow for preparation?

His response was fairly detailed. He stated that they receive a newsletter every month from WRAP and this month they did receive notification that there was a campaign about to start.

My second question was whether Birmingham City Council was doing anything to take part within the campaign?

He stated that the only thing they were currently doing for it was to have a sculpture made out of recycled material created. Which begs the question why are they not posting leaflets to point out what other materials can be recycled?

So my final question was, is Birmingham City Council planning to expand the doorstep recycling scheme and whether it will include the additional recyclable that the spring campaign is aiming to make aware?

He first started off by stating that they are unable to expand the scheme to allow for additional materials as the sorting plant where all the materials, such as glass, plastic and cardboard etc, is currently unable to cater for these additional materials as of yet and until then of course they can not expand to include them. Whether the sorting plant will be expanding to include these materials however he could not say.

I found this fairly interesting since to me it seems that in Birmingham at least the campaign will be acknowledged with the creation of the sculpture but for the most part will not go any further due to the lack of a suitable recycling plant.

He further added though that the current doorstep scheme will be expanding to include flats which they are current in the progress of doing.

I was pleased with the information Phil provided, he said that if i had any further questions he would be happy to answer them and suggested looking closely at the WRAP website as they tend to be the more proactive organisation compared to LARAC.

So I did and was happy to find a link to the actual campaign website which I must say was very well made including an interactive search of what items you can current recycle at your postcode. As well as that it also supplies details to local authorities on how to run their campaign including make leaflets, posters and further interactions with the public.

It seems then that the only thing holding Birmingham back from properly getting involved in this scheme and future expansions of wider recyclable materials is the lack of services to deal with them. I’m curious as to whether there are any actual plans for updating the recycling plant.

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