About Aire Valley Recycling

Kerbside Household Recycling Collections
Aire Valley Recycling (AVR) is a social enterprise working with Bradford Council to keep as many household recyclable items as possible out of landfill. This is achieved through our kerbside recycling collection service.

What happens to our profits?
As a social enterprise any money we make must be reinvested in helping disadvantaged people progress to employment or in environmental work. We employ 12 local people and provide volunteering and training opportunities for those with disabilities and the long term unemployed.

Where we operate AVR collects household recycling from about 17,000 homes in the Keighley and Aire Valley areas. Many of these are ‘hard to reach’ properties where access is difficult such as high rise flats or off-road houses. How we operate We use a method of recycling collection called source separation, which provides the most environmental and economic household recycling collection solution. Source separation enables us to collect a wider range of materials than other recycling services and offer a fortnightly collection service (weekly from flats).

The Social Dividend We convert your recycling into opportunites for disabled, long term unemployed and other people to progress to employment. The more you recycle the more you help the environment and local people. Want to get started? For a FREE box or bag to start recycling contact us. Find your recycling collection day here.

Source Separation
Source separation means sorting the recyclable waste at the point of collection. Aire Valley Recycling believes that source separation provides the greatest economic and environmental benefits. The alternative to source separation is "commingled" where you present your glass, cans, plastic bottles, paper etc. all mixed together and they are then put into a large compactor truck to squash them to save space.

Source separated recyclable waste

The comparison below shows why Aire Valley’s commitment to the environment means we encourage source separation:

• Loss of recycling due to contamination is significantly lower for source separated when compared to commingled (1% vs. 12-15%).
• Stillage vehicles (used for source separation) use less fuel than compactor vehicles (used for commingled).
• Material from source separated collections are of a higher quality than commingled.
• Higher quality recyclables are more likely to be recycled in the UK.
• Higher quality recyclables results in higher prices obtained for the recyclate.
• Source separated collections tend to have a higher degree of contact between recycling staff and the customer. This encourages higher quality and more recycling.
• The process of separating materials for recycling makes everyone more aware of the value of recycling. When someone understands why they should do something they are more likely to act than if they are just told to do something. This philosophy is also being applied to food production and understanding where food comes from, a topic highlighted on numerous television programmes.
• Unlike commingled collections there is no need to use energy to separate materials after collection.