Dales are top for recycling

Currently, 56.7 per cent of all household waste in the Derbyshire Dales is recycled.

The head of Derbyshire Dales District Council’s head of environmental services Heidi McDougall revealed in a meeting last week that the authority has the highest figures for recycling in Derbyshire – and some of the best figures in the country.

The authority came under fire in 2012 when it introduced its recycling scheme which saw the ordinary household ‘black bin’ waste being collected once a fortnight, as oppose to once a week.

However the move appears to have paid off as now 56.7 per cent of all household waste is recycled – meaning it is not just the hills that are green in the Derbyshire Dales.

Council leader Councillor Lewis Rose commented: “This is a fantastic achievement.

“We’re top in Derbyshire and we don’t write about that very often because it’s something worth shouting about.”

Members of the council’s environment committee approved a waste management strategy, in which the authority sets out how it plans to further reduce the amount of waste taken to landfill.

The council aims to have 58.3 per cent of all household waste in the area recycled or composted by 2017/18.

It plans to do this by introducing a community fund to pay for environmental and recycling activities in the district, use on–going marketing and promotion to maximise recycling activity and review the composting service when the treatment contract ends in mid 2015.

Cllr Mike Ratcliffe commented: “At the end of the day what we need to do is to make people throw away less and also reduce the amount of packaging that our products have.”

He added that he was a great advocate of freecycling, which is reusing unwanted items, and would encourage residents to do that.