Communal recycling is being introduced to 76 streets around London Road, Queen’s Park and Rottingdean this week.
The large black bins will be in place by the end of this week as what Brighton and Hove City Council dubs phase five of the communal recycling scheme.
Residents in the streets will no longer be able to use their black boxes, but instead put plastic bottles, food and drink cans, cardboard and paper in the communal bins.
The scheme has divided opinion, with some people loving the fact recycling bins are no longer cluttering up their pavements – and others disliking the inconvenience of a longer trip to the bins.
The loss of parking spaces or visibility when bins are parked on double yellow lines has also been criticised.
Most of the newest communal bins, which will be emptied at least three times a week, have been placed alongside existing communal refuse bins to avoid taking up parking spaces.
Residents can choose to keep their boxes to store their recycling or leave their empty boxes outside for the council to collect and reuse in other parts of the city.
Locations of the glass recycling bins have been chosen to minimise problems with noise.
Residents helped decide where the bins should be located following feedback from the public consultation and exhibitions last year.
Councillor Pete West, chairman of the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, said: “It’s great to see the new communal bins arriving in more areas of the city enabling many more residents to drop off their recycling whenever they like.”
He added that the new scheme will also see the end of black boxes cluttering pavements and doorsteps, and stop passers-by using them as bins, contaminating contents and causing wind-blown litter.
The council expects the new bins to bring big increases in recycling rates. During a trial of more than 3,000 homes in Brunswick and Adelaide in 2012, recycling rates rose from 12.5 per cent to 21 per cent.
The scheme is being funded with an £840,000 government grant to help councils improve waste collection and recycling services. The scheme is expected to result in savings of approximately £500,000 over six years.
The communal bin roll-out will be completed by the end of May and will eventually serve 32,000 city centre households from West Hove to East Brighton.
Good. They work..
Unless they are left to fill up and overflow . These BINS are good . The people and management ARE the weak link . Good luck to us ALL . Coincidentally , the Japanese have a GLORIOUS model when it comes to recycling and rubbish collection . Actually . forget it . Give the DUSTCART drivers £ 492 to work a Saturday and claim to be PART-Time and TWO fingers to us ALL . oh , they do . With great sadness at the the UK STILL burying it’s rubbish and building houses on it . tell your Kids and grand kids about it . Lemme
With great sadness at the the UK STILL burying it’s rubbish and building houses on it – Ian when was the last time you know this to be fact ? do you know most of our un recyclable trash is send for incineration …it should be a lot lot more than it currently is now that many more items are separated for recycling .. The graph above shows where Brighton and Hove waste goes. We used to send a lot of waste to landfill but this has reduced significantly over the past couple of years and most waste that is not recycled, reused or composted is now sent to our energy from waste facility in Newhaven see link click on red text