As my look into Birmingham’s recycling resources and its participation in the WRAP spring campaign comes to an end, my final piece of investigatory work has been to look at other councils around Birmingham in the West Midlands.
The first council i chose to look at was Sandwell, mainly because Phil Brooks of Birmingham City Council mentioned them directly during my interview of him over the phone, and I must say it was worth following up on the name drop as what I found will put Birmingham’s recycling scheme to shame.
First, Sandwell does have a doorstep recycling scheme must the same as Birminghams’ except that it does everything Birminghams’ isn’t willing to put the money in to do. Its introducing wheelie bins that as I type this are being distributed, in these bins not only are they expanding what they can recycle which Birmingham feels the need not to do, but they are adding other more complicated products such as Tetra Paks which are only now being recycled in the most up to date recycling schemes.
Additional not only do the doorstep collection vans pick up your recycled materials, they also sort them, then and there, which is the primary reason for why they recycled so many other materials that Birmingham does not, shamefully Birmingham City Council stated that it was far to expensive to do this for its residents.
There’s more though, they basically do everything Birmingham does except they transport their recyclable materials further a field to Southampton, for processing. This is because the facilities there are a lot better and not only that Sandwell Council is also working to upgrade other sorting plants to contend with a wider range of materials. They have also recently took part in the “Love food, Hate Waste” scheme with Wrap something I never heard about in Birmingham.
I’m also waiting for phone calls from Dudley and Solihull Council representatives but from the information I have gathered simply from their website they also possess better recycling schemes than Birmingham does. Here is the links for Dudley’s recycle page and Solihull’s page.
So overall, the only conclusion I can gain from my investigations into Birmingham’s Recycling capabilities, is that they are “average” at best, while those surrounding us seem to of put a lot more time, effort and money into creating schemes that attempt to get the full benefit of recycling. After i speak to Dudley’s and Solihull’s recycling officers I will add another blog detailing what they say if it is any different from what I’ve already found out by contacting Sandwell and by looking on their website.
Recycled News 
Dale O'Keeffe said
It’s good that Sandwell council are doing what they are doing but you’ve got to remember Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the UK and the largest council in Europe. So they have a lot of people to deal with, also if recycling isn’t done efficiently it’s pointless in the UK we only recycle 1,2 and 3 labelled plastics, anything else either without a number or any other number, is shipped all the way to china to be recycled. These are often the issues that need to be addressed first.
liamjrichardson said
Of course, but is Birmingham Council really doing it efficently? According to Solihull council in my new blog, not pre-sorting the materials before they arrive at the sorting plant, is bad and can ruin the sorting when its received at the sorting plant.