WRAP recently published the results of a comprehensive study into different household recycling systems. The report looks at good practice in recycling services & models the relative costs & performance. It covers the costs of widely used kerbside collection systems in three main categories: kerbside sort, where different types of materials such as glass & plastic bottles are put into separate compartments of a collection vehicle; single stream co-mingled, where everything goes into one vehicle & then sorted at a materials recovery facility (MRF); & two stream partially co-mingled, where householders separate recyclables into two categories, usually fibres (paper/card) & containers (glass, cans & plastic bottles). The report found that in the current market, kerbside sort schemes are more cost effective for local authorities than single stream co-mingled. However, two stream co-mingled collections where paper is kept separate, have similar net costs to kerbside sort schemes. Co-mingled schemes had generally been thought to be cheaper to run but fare less well when the cost of sorting the material at an MRF is taken into account.
