The new blue bin waste collection scheme has been declared a success. Compared with the old service South Cambridgeshire District Council has saved £305k in the first six months (October 2010-March 2011). In addition, savings of a further £10,000 per month have been made since the start of the new financial year.

Alongside this, results from a recent recycling service survey show very high levels of customer satisfaction amongst South Cambridgeshire residents. Earlier this year, 2,000 surveys were sent out about the recycling service and over 1,000 responses were received, 94% were satisfied by the range of materials they can recycle.

Cllr Sue Ellington, Environmental Services Portfolio Holder said

This is excellent news, we provide one of the most comprehensive recycling services in the country, and 91% of our residents feel that the introduction of the blue bin has further improved the service.

There is a very low contamination rate in South Cambridgeshire (materials that shouldn’t go in the blue bin) – just over 2%, for which we would like to thank residents.

There is still more that we can do to achieve a higher recycling rate, for example it’s estimated that 84% of all food waste is still going in the black bin – this should go in the green bin so that it can be composted, and 10% of paper is still going in the black bin when it should go into the paper caddy.

We’re proud that our residents recognise the success of the scheme, and alongside this the savings that have been made to the service are fantastic.