Kerbside collection
Kerbside collection or curbside collection is a service provided to households, typically in urban and suburban areas, of collecting and disposing of household waste and recyclables. It is usually accomplished by personnel using specially built vehicles to pick up household waste in containers that are acceptable to, or prescribed by, the municipality and are placed on the kerb.
History
Before the 20th century, the amount of waste produced by a household was relatively small. Household waste was often simply thrown out of an open window, buried in the garden or deposited in outhouses. When human concentrations became more dense, waste collectors, called nightmen or gong farmers were hired to collect the night soil from pail closets, performing their duties only at night. Meanwhile, disposing of refuse became a problem wherever cities grew. Often refuse was placed in unusable areas just outside the city, such as wetlands and tidal zones. One example is London, which from Roman times disposed of its refuse outside the London Wall beside the River Thames. Another example is 1830s Manhattan, where thousands of hogs were permitted to roam the streets and eat garbage. A small industry developed as "swill children" collected kitchen refuse to sell for pig feed and the rag and bone man traded goods for bones and rags. Later, in the late nineteenth century, trash was fed to swine in industrial.As sanitation engineering came to be practised beginning in the mid-19th century and human waste was conveyed from the home in pipes, the gong farmer was replaced by the municipal rubbish collector as there remained growing amounts of household refuse, including fly ash from coal, which was burnt for home heating. In Paris, the rag and bone man worked side by side with the municipal bin man, though reluctantly: in 1884, Eugène Poubelle introduced the first integrated kerbside collection and recycling system, requiring residents to separate their waste into perishable items, paper and cloth, and crockery and shells. He also established rules for how private collectors and city workers should cooperate and he developed standard dimensions for refuse containers: his name in France is now synonymous with the garbage can. Under Poubelle, food waste and other organics collected in Paris were transported to nearby Saint Ouen where they were composted. This continued well into the 20th century when plastics began to contaminate the waste stream.
From the late-19th century to the mid-20th century, more or less consistent with the rise of consumables and disposable products municipalities began to pass anti-dumping ordinances and introduce kerbside collection. Residents were required to use a variety of refuse containers to facilitate kerbside collection but the main type was a variation of Poubelle's metal garbage container. It was not until the late 1960s that the green bin bag was introduced by Glad. Later, as waste management practices were introduced with the aim of reducing landfill impacts, a range of container types, mostly made of durable plastic, came to be introduced to facilitate the proper diversion of the waste stream. Such containers include blue boxes, green bins and wheelie bins or dumpsters.
Over time, waste collection vehicles gradually increased in size from the hand pushed tip cart or English dust cart, a name by which these vehicles are still referred, to large compactor trucks.
Waste management and resource recovery
Kerbside collection is today often referred to as a strategy of local authorities to collect recyclable items from the consumer. Kerbside collection is considered a low-risk strategy to reduce waste volumes and increase the recycling rates. Recyclable materials are typically collected in large wheelie bins, plastic bags, or small open, coloured plastic boxes, specifically designated for content.Recyclable materials that may be separately collected from municipal waste include:
Biodegradable waste component
- Green waste
- Kitchen and food waste
- Christmas trees
- Office paper
- Newsprint
- Paperboard
- Cardboard
- Corrugated fiberboard
- Plastics
- Glass
- Copper
- Aluminium
- Steel and Tinplate
- Co-mingled recyclables- can be sorted by a clean materials recovery facility
Kerbside collection and household recycling schemes are also being used as tools by many local authorities to increase the public's awareness of their waste production.
New and emerging waste treatment technologies such as mechanical biological treatment may offer an alternative to kerbside collection through automated separation of waste in recycling factories.
Recycling variants
Kerbside collection encompasses many subtly different systems, which differ mostly on where in the process the recyclates are sorted and cleaned. The main categories are 1) mixed waste collection, 2) commingled recyclables, and 3) source separation. A waste collection vehicle generally picks up the waste.| System | Description | Image |
| Mixed waste collection | Recyclates are collected mixed with the rest of the waste, and the desired materials are sorted out and cleaned at a central sorting facility. This results in a large amount of recyclable waste being too soiled to reprocess, but has advantages as well: The city need not pay for the separate collection of recyclates, no public education is needed, and any changes to the recyclability of certain materials are implemented where sorting occurs. | |
| Co-mingled or single-stream system | Recyclables are mixed but kept separate from non-recyclable waste. This greatly reduces the need for post-collection cleaning, but requires public education on what materials are recyclable. | |
| Source separation | Each material is cleaned and sorted by the consumer prior to collection. It requires the least post-collection sorting and produces the purest recyclates. However, it incurs additional operating costs for collecting each material, and requires extensive public education to avoid recyclate contamination. In Oregon, US, Oregon DEQ surveyed multi-family property managers; about half of them reported problems, including contamination of recyclables due to trespassers such as transients gaining access to collection areas. |
Source separation used to be the preferred method due to the high cost of sorting commingled collection. However, advances in sorting technology have substantially lowered this overhead, and many areas that had developed source separation programs have switched to what is called co-mingled collection.
Usage by country
Australia
Residential kerbside collection is carried out by local governments, with some exceptions, e.g. some large apartment complexes may have their own separate arrangements with commercial providers. Available services and details vary from council to council. Councils generally provide residents with wheelie bins for kerbside collection of normal waste which is collected weekly or fortnightly. Many councils also have less frequent kerbside collection of bulkier waste collected once or twice a year.Councils provide their residents with two or three wheelie bins, depending on the council, with some councils having different options for different properties. The two-bin system consists of a recycling bin for co-mingled recyclables, and a general waste bin which is often smaller. The three-bin system consists of the above two bins plus a green waste bin. Not all councils have a green waste bin collection service. Many councils provide the option of larger bins, smaller bins, or additional bins.
A wide variety of hard plastics, glass bottles and jars, steel cans, aluminium cans, paper and cardboard can be put in the recycling bin. The green waste bin can be used for garden organics, and councils are increasingly allowing food scraps, used paper towels and tissues and other biodegradable organics to be placed in the green waste bin. The council may turn the green waste into mulch or compost and extract energy. Details of what can and cannot be placed into each bin vary by council.
Most councils follow a standard colour scheme for their wheelie bins, specified in Australian standard AS4123. According to the standard, general waste bins have a red lid, recycling bins have a yellow lid, green waste bins have a lime green lid, and all these bins have a dark green or black body. Not all councils follow this colour scheme. For example, recycling bins in some councils have a blue body and yellow lid.
Bins are emptied according to one of several patterns. Generally speaking, general waste bins are emptied weekly while recycling bins and green waste bins are emptied fortnightly on alternate weeks. Many councils with food waste recycling have switched to emptying green waste bins weekly and general waste bins and recycling bins fortnightly on alternate weeks. Some councils empty recycling bins weekly, while others do so only during a certain period like the Christmas and summer holiday period, switching to fortnightly at other times.
Recycling bins are provided at no additional cost, while the general waste bin is either at no additional cost or at an annual cost. The green waste bin, where available, is either provided to all residents, or available as an option to residents, either at an additional annual cost, a one-off cost or no additional cost, depending on the council. Some councils limit the availability of green waste bins. Many councils provide the option of larger bins than the standard ones provided or additional bins at additional annual cost. Some provide the option of a smaller general waste bin at a reduced cost.
Many councils also have kerbside collection of bulky waste. There may be different kinds of collection, e.g.:
- Large branches
- E-waste which the council may recycle
- Hard rubbish