Moelwyn Hughes Court, Islington

London Borough Reduces Contamination and Fly-tipping at Bring Sites

One of the biggest obstacles to increasing recycling for any Council is the hard-to-reach areas such as blocks of flats, HMOs, flats above shops and small terraced properties without space for numerous recycling bins. In inner-city boroughs the proportion of the total housing stock which are flats can be as high as 80%, so securing clean recycling from such areas is essential.

The London Borough of Islington Council declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 and set themselves some very demanding household recycling targets, given the high proportion of flats in the Borough. The use of bring sites has always been a central pillar to the Council’s recycling strategy, but the bins were regularly getting contaminated and fly-tipped to the extent that they seemed more trouble than they were worth, indeed in some Boroughs they have even been removed altogether.

In 2017 the Waste Strategy Team had started upgrading their bring sites using metroSTOR housings to make them more accessible for residents and easier to use while discouraging flytipping and reducing contamination. Results were good and the programme was accelerated with now over 300 bin housings having been installed across the Borough to date. Most are in on-street locations, while some are within the communal spaces around social housing blocks, but all have brought the Council a significant increase in the capture of clean recyclables.