Scott Edgell, General Manager of Veolia Environmental Services UK, will attend the Panel.

Cllr Brunt, Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Cleanliness, introduced the item. He highlighted that increasing recycling of food waste is key to the success of the new service that will be rolled out from 1 October 2018. Currently, only around a third of Merton’s households are recycling food waste. On average around 3kg of food waste per household per month is recycled in Merton. This is much lower than the borough’s surrounding neighbours (ie: Croydon 4.7kg a month, Sutton 7.5 kg and Kingston 6kg). The new service will collect food waste every week.

The new service will be innovative as it will offer kerbside collections of textiles and household batteries once a fortnight. The change in the service aims to increase recycling, save money through switching to residual waste collections every fortnight and make Merton’s streets cleaner by using wheeled bins to solve the issue of refuse not currently being contained.

Will Graham, Business Support Manager, Veolia, provided the meeting with a presentation on the communication to Merton’s residents of the rollout of the new waste service. This highlighted:

·         Residual waste will be collected 26 times a year (from wheeled bins), garden waste 26 times a year, dry mixed paper 26 times a year and food waste 52 times year;

·         As a result of the amount of change to the service, 75% of residents will have a change to the day of their collection;

·         Collection of both textiles and batteries from the kerbside will be added to the service;

·         There will be three lines of communication to residents: a welcome to the new service leaflet including differentiation for those that will not be part of the standard service, a service information pack which will include stickers for bins and notification of the new day for collections and visits to all houses of multiple occupation to undertake audits of containers to ensure all are being correctly used;

·         The initial welcome to the new service leaflet will be distributed from 9 to 20 July 2018. This will include communication to those using blue and purple sacks, for whom there will be no change to their current service. This needs to be carefully communicated as well as information to those for whom there will be a service change;

·         A pictorial approach is being taken in communications to support those for whom English is an additional language or who have an additional learning need;

·         The communications to residents in flats will be different, reflecting their service is not changing and focusing on the issue of reducing contamination;

·         A schedule of roadshows that will take place over the summer has been published. These will focus on explaining the service change to residents face-to-face. A range of other channels will also be used with focus on the issue of contamination; and

·         Wheeled bins will be delivered to homes between 30 July 2018 and 28 September 2018 along with the service information pack.

In response to member questions, the following clarification was provided:

·         (Cllr Brunt) Merton has learnt from the experience in Sutton and its communication of the service change. This is different from what is being planned in Merton as food waste collections were introduced at this point in Sutton. These are already in place in Merton. However, whilst there were difficulties experienced in Sutton with the service change, the benefits are now being felt as demonstrated by Sutton achieving 7.5kg of food waste recycling on average per household per month. Merton hopes to achieve this success earlier following the service change. Achieving this success shouldn’t be underestimated though given it involves 60k households moving to wheeled bins;

·         (Charles Baker, Commissioning Manager, Waste and Fleet Services): there are challenges reaching those for whom the assisted collection service will be appropriate. This is because the service will not simply go to those that already receive an assisted collection. Potentially, there will be new residents who will be eligible. Work is therefore ongoing through appropriate community groups to raise awareness of the service;

·         (Will Graham) Advice will be provided on the disposal of existing refuse bins. However, there are no plans for these to be removed by Veolia other than those that were part of the Lavender Fields pilot study. Suggested that existing bins can be made into composters;

·         (Will Graham) The service is anticipating an annual 4% churn in residents. It is planned to use the new service leaflet to introduce the service to new residents moving into the borough following the initial rollout. It was mentioned that this might be distributed to new residents with their council tax bill. The website will also continue to carry introductory information;

·         (Will Graham) After the first few cycles of the new service, residents who fail to present rubbish correctly will have their container(s) tagged with a reminder of the service requirements. After a second tag, a reminder letter will be sent with this recorded within Veolia’s systems. A third tag will generate a visit;

·         (Chris Lee, Director of Environment and Regeneration) The LB of Merton has the power to and is already using this power in relation to  waste enforcement. There will be an amnesty during the introduction of the new waste service and some tolerance of additional bags of waste being left alongside the new wheeled bins whilst residents get to grips with the new bin size. Thereafter there will be a balance between discretion and appropriate enforcement given the requirements are reasonable;

·         (Will Graham) Residents will be directed to the website to order extra and larger bins;

·         (Charlie Baker) The process to request a larger bin will be clearly stated in the service rollout communications. The ability to request will be based on a range of criteria including having a household of five or more, or additional clinical waste etc;

·         (Chris Lee) Sutton’s communication of the new service rollout has been carefully reviewed. As a result, LB Merton is supplementing Veolia’s communication plans. The only item in the plan that is not being actioned is the advert on Sky. Additional resource is being made available to supplement the back office operation given an increase in resident calls is anticipated. There will also be a temporary increase in the neighbourhood client officer team;

·         (Will Graham) Wheeled bins will be delivered to households taped shut with the start date for usage clearly stated. Until this date, residual waste should continue to be presented in black sacks at the curtilage by 6am on the day of collection. Wheeled bins will need to be stored by households until the new waste service starts;

·         (Chris Lee) Based on learning from others, there will be no mixed approach to waste collection (so no households will continue to have black sack collections whilst others begin to receive collections using wheeled bins). Collections using wheeled bins will begin simultaneously for all residents across the borough;

·         (John Haynes, Communication Advisor, South London Waste Partnership) To support those who may have difficulties with communication (learning difficulties, English as an additional language etc) a pictorial approach has been taken. This has been informed by the template materials developed by the organisation Recycle for London, all of which have been user tested. Where it is not possible to provide differentiated versions of some communications, it will be possible to contact the South London Waste Partnership (SLWP) for help. Proactive work is also ongoing to support residents through community groups;

·         (John Haynes) A full range of communication channels is being used to ensure engagement of harder to reach groups. For example, use of social media including sponsored posts;

·         (Chris Lee) Communications are being distributed through school bags;

·         (John Haynes) Following the new service rollout, it will be possible to run cross regional, harmonised communication campaigns. This will include an annual newsletter;

·         (Will Graham) Examples of communications will be shared with Councillors prior to use;

·         (Chris Lee) Residents will not have to pay for additional boxes or larger bins where these are needed. After the service rollout, communications will continue through channels such as My Merton, council tax bills and the website;

·         (Chris Lee) Currently, Merton’s waste service tolerates unlimited residual waste that is collected weekly. Only 50% of residents participate in the food waste service now. It is assumed the remainder put food waste in with residual waste when this should be going to recycling. It is assumed that with the move to fortnightly residual waste collections, having rotting food waste for a longer time period will not be tolerated and this will generate an increase in use of the food waste service. This is supported by the experience in Sutton. Seven litre food cadies are available for kitchen counters. The outdoor caddies hold 23 litres of food waste and will be collected every week, making this a more attractive approach to handling household food waste;

·         (Cllr Brunt) Is an optimistic advocate that this will reduce the quantity of rotting food waste in with residual waste;

·         (Chris Lee) Noted that ultimately, the aim should be to completely reduce the quantity of food waste; that this should be out of the waste stream altogether;

·         (Will Graham) Clarified that it will be possible for textiles and batteries to be presented with residual waste collections at the kerbside for collection but not within residual waste; and

·         (Charlie Baker) The communication strategy makes clear that the assisted bins collection exists and how to request to participate in this.

RESOLVED: Members highlighted two areas of concern: support for residents needing assisted collections and residents needing to store wheeled bins for anything up to two months prior to use. They requested that information be provided at the September 2018 meeting on the numbers registering for assisted collections compared to using this service prior to the rollout. They also asked that Veolia be requested to return to the Panel at its meeting in February 2019 to report on the rollout of the new service.