Purple recycling bins for paper and card could be used in remaining Lincolnshire districts by 2025

The separate paper and card collections are already used in some districts, and are set to be rolled out over the rest of Lincolnshire in the next two years.

Lincolnshire County Council’s Environment and Economy Committee were given an update last week.

Rachel Stamp, the council’s waste partnership and project manager, said: “It is anticipated that potentially by the end of 2024, early 2025, hopefully we will be able to do that.

“There are all sorts of local issues that waste collection authorities have got to manage in terms of their own priorities and workload but in an ideal world we would have everybody rolled in by 2025, though I can’t guarantee that.”

Four of the county’s seven districts have implemented separate dry paper and cardboard bins, leading to a total of 13,909 tonnes of separate fibre being collected up to February 2023.

Prior to the scheme being introduced, the average contamination rate was 31 per cent but was now around 15 per cent.

Paper re-processor Palm Recycling found that the waste it received from the councils had an average contamination rate of just 1.5 per cent.

Councillor Ashley Baxter asked if the roll-out to other authorities could take place any quicker “given the enormous success of the scheme”.

However, Rachel Stamp said that one of the “success criteria” had been taking roll-outs on a “step by step” basis.

“We’ve allowed people the time that they have needed to adjust to the behaviour change that we’ve asked them to,” she said.

“Indeed, if we rolled in the remaining three authorities together, we would look at an increased cost in terms of the support we’d be able to give them so we need to be able to plan that and have buy in from our partners.”

Support included helping people to recycle better and also to find space for additional bins. It is expected some bins could also become smaller as a result of the changes.

Elsewhere, Ms Stamp reported a number of changes to garden and food waste collection were still being held up by delays in the Environment Act, with hopes that new “burden” funding would soon be announced.