Kerbside glass recycling plans approved by Newark and Sherwood District Council following consultation

Residents are set to benefit from a new kerbside glass recycling scheme after an overwhelmingly positive response to the plans during a consultation.

This week, Newark and Sherwood District Council approved plans to introduce the new system across the district.

It follows a public survey — launched five weeks ago — in which almost 93% of respondents said they wanted to see the new service.

The response represents nearly 12% of households in the district, a figure which is considered very high for a survey issued by any organisation.

At present, to recycle household glass residents must travel to a network of bottle banks.

The survey was conducted to gauge opinion on whether residents would support a new service that collected their glass from outside their homes instead.

More than 6,3oo residents completed the survey. Of those, more than 5,800 said that they would like to see a kerbside glass recycling service introduced across Newark and Sherwood.

Council leader David Lloyd said “We want to make recycling as simple and easy as possible.

“While many residents use our network of bottle banks, collecting glass from peoples’ homes will make it more convenient for them and boost our recycling rate.

“Residents have told us that they would value a kerbside glass recycling service so we’re going to introduce one.

“After the council has allocated the money — which I fully expect to happen next month — we’ll be getting on with the job of organising the new service. We’ll be ordering some new vehicles, lots of new bins and working out all the operational details.

“Newark and Sherwood covers the largest area of any borough or district council in Nottinghamshire and we need to recognise that not everyone’s needs are the same.

“For example, some people won’t want or haven’t the space for an extra bin and others in our district make use of the Recycling Ollerton and Boughton Scheme, who we are keen to work alongside.

“Introducing a new kerbside glass recycling scheme is something we are committed to. It’s another demonstration of our commitment to becoming cleaner, safer and greener and we’ll be rolling the new service out just as soon as we can receive delivery of new trucks.”

The council’s portfolio holder for Cleaner, Safer, Greener, Roger Jackson, said: “I totally agree, it is something that our residents want to see and will be greatly received.

“There will be a cost associated with this to collect glass but it will help our recycling rates.”