The local council should take on a share of the risk of selling on recyclable materials, rather than leaving it entirely to their waste contractors. As it stands, local authorities expect that their waste contractors to handle all the risks that are involved in selling recyclable materials, which leaves the companies exposed in the current market.

Some local authorities believe that this approach has some advantages of leaving the collecting and selling of the recyclable materials to the contractor. Councils are fully aware of this issue, but are wary about changing the way the contracts are currently handed out.

The local authorities would have entered into the waste collection contracts due to the fact that they will receive a fixed price for the recyclables collected. Which is used to offset collection costs, the risk involved in selling the materials is shouldered by the waste contractors. But, in recent years, the volatile price of commodities has seen contractors claiming they have lost out from this arrangement and in some cases contracts have even collapsed.

Reports say that the situation is ‘unsustainable’ and the Waste Collection sector and some of its members are calling for councils to share in the risk as well as the reward, also for this to be kept separate from the pricing for waste collection.

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