Glass recycling to be extended to nearly 22,300 more homes in East and West Belfast
Belfast Council has revealed some details of plans for the expansion of the city’s glass collection and recycling service.
While not going into details for routes and individual streets, elected representatives this week received numbers and a map of the proposed phase one expansion in the 2024/25 year.
At the monthly meeting of the People and Communities Committee, a report revealed the first phase will bring glass collection and recycling to 22,826 homes in East and West Belfast that do not already receive the service.
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The plan involves bringing a new service to 1868 homes at the Black Mountain district electoral area, 9309 at Collin, 6462 at Lisnasharragh, and 5187 at Ormiston - that is 11,177 homes in West Belfast and in 11,649 in East Belfast.
The council report states the figures may vary as more detailed planning is carried out.
The report states: “One of the key aspects of planning the project is the construction of the collection routes. In mapping out phase one of the expansion, the service is considering: existing kerbside glass provision (or otherwise), glass “bring-bank” availability, and the views of those residents who transferred to Belfast City Council under local government reform, and who then received a different kerbside recycling scheme which no longer included glass collections.
“Taking these factors into consideration the proposed catchment area for phase one is set out.”
Last week elected representatives at City Hall committed Belfast City Council to an £802,000 budget for a contract to expand the highly uneven glass collection recycling service across the city. The project involves the phased expansion of the kerbside glass collection scheme to households in the outer city or blue bin area.
The council was successful in securing an offer of match funding from the Stormont Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs for 50 percent of the total cost estimate, meaning that the total costs of the project are estimated to be around £1.6 million.
At the People and Communities Committee meeting this week, Alliance Councillor Jenna Maghie said: “I am really excited by some of the figures here, I see them as encouraging, and hope we can continue to see them on that same trajectory. I am really pleased to see something coming from DAERA - what a minister he is.”
She added: “The expansion addresses inequity, especially for constituents who lost access to it. And I will continue to bang on about the lack of bring-back points in Ormiston.”
A council officer said: “We have a proposal, which is a desktop proposal, and it is for just under 23,000 households at the minute. What we have to do is stress-test that against operations, to go to the operations crew and see if that is within the art of the possible.
“We are reasonably confident it is there or thereabouts, but for me to sit here tonight and give you a detailed list of streets, I might mislead you, because we haven’t stress tested that. Until we have a definitive list of streets I would be asking for a bit of space to let the operations teams critique what we are planning to do. But the overall numbers will remain more or less the same.”
The council officer said details of individual streets would start emerging by November, and roll out is expected to begin by the forth quarter of the 2024/25 year, that is, in the early part of next year.
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