Plastic bags and food wrappers will soon be collected from the doorsteps of Reading homes as part of a £200,000 recycling trial.
It is expected to start towards the end of next month with 5,000 households taking part, and then expand to Wokingham and Bracknell next year.
Under the scheme, people will also be able to recycle plastic food packaging including bubble wrap, cling film and net bags. They will go into a single-use bag which refuse collectors will send to a national processing centre.
Plastic straws and cutlery, pills and tablets blister packs, disposable masks, and foam or polystyrene won’t be included.
Councillors from Reading Borough, Wokingham Borough and Bracknell Forest councils unanimously approved the scheme at a meeting on Thursday, June 15.
It is part of a national research trial run by the FlexCollect project, which is backed by the government, and comes with £200,000 of funding.
Wokingham Borough Council’s Cllr Sarah Kerr pointed out that Wokingham Borough Council has recently decided to replace its blue bags for general rubbish with wheelie bins.
“We’re moving away from single-use plastic blue residual bags to wheelie bins,” she said. “If we then re-introduce single-use plastic bags that is then optically going to be very, very bad for us.”
She added the problem wasn’t just a matter of communications and public relations. She also wanted to make sure that producing blue plastic bags wouldn’t cause more emissions and waste.
She asked: “Is there a way of working with the provider to look at an alternative way of collecting this so we’re not using single-use plastic bags?
“If we’re actually generating carbon emissions to produce bags, that’s the issue.”
Sarah Innes of re3, the waste collection company serving Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham, said the blue plastic bags would be recycled along with the waste that is put inside them.
She added: “We’re happy to talk to FlexCollect about what options there might be for the second year, but it might be there isn’t an awful lot we can do.”
