Bristol's kerbside recycling service is among the most thorough in the UK, with kitchen and garden waste collected weekly. The sound of black bins being emptied into a recycling lorry is now a familiar part of the cityscape, with weekly pick-ups of food and drinks cans, newspapers and magazines (including catalogues and junkmail), yellow pages and telephone directories, glass bottles and jars, clothes, blankets and material, shoes, aluminium foil and containers, household batteries, including rechargeable, spectacles, aerosol cans, engine oil and car batteries.

Plastic bottles can be taken to numerous centres around the city, while the Household Waste Recycling Centres at St Philips and Avonmouth are open daily for disposal of any of the above materials.

The collection of waste from garden and kitchen is especially valuable, since plant materials in landfill release high quantities of methane. To date, however the overall benefits of the scheme have been reduced by the necessity of trucking Bristol's waste to a high-temperature composting facility in Dorset.

A dramatic improvement is promised when the facility's owner, New Earth Solutions, constructs a new 30,000 tonne/pa composting plant outside Bristol. When finished it will allow the city's organic waste to be composted locally to exacting public health standards and returned to the local landscape. On a domestic scale this is already happening, with composting bins a common feature of gardens across the city.

Educating people about the necessity of reducing the waste that goes to landfill has been essential to the city council's success in this field. There was some adverse reaction to the news that wheelie-bins were only going to be emptied every other week, but people quickly adapted to the new routine and to the new brown food waste bins.

To an excellent range of leaflets and web-based information the council recently added a DVD, Recycling in Bristol, which can be viewed online. It tells people exactly what can they can recycle and how, and encourages occupants of flats to use communal facilities provided in the street.

The Recycling Consortium runs more specific campaigns targeting particular sectors of the city. While Recycling in Flats Everyday (RIFE) involves coordinating the installation of Mini Recycling Centres (MRCs) and promoting their use to residents of flats in Bristol, the Real Nappy Project offers incentives to parents who want to use washable nappies instead of disposables.