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£420K award to
help improve air quality across the Liverpool City Region & the
Merseyside area
MERSEYTRAVEL'S bid to see
cleaner and greener transport across the region has taken another
step forward, with the successful award of £420K for emission
reducing and fuel saving devices to be fitted to buses across the
Liverpool City Region (LCR) fleet.
37 buses will be fitted with devices to help clean up emissions from
buses and bring them up to higher EURO emission standards, helping
to reduce greenhouse gases and other emissions in areas of the City
region which currently experience poor air quality.
This award follows other recent environmental projects including:-
► A grant in 2013 to fit 59 older vehicles with similar equipment,
which are already showing successful results in cuts of around 75%
in harmful emissions
► A collaboration project between Stagecoach Merseyside, Merseytravel and the BEST Institute to trial the emission levels
from buses using sustainable biodiesel.
► The recent installation of the first of 124 electric vehicle
charging points across the LCR and West Cheshire, to encourage more
people to consider running an electric car and to promote a cleaner,
low emission transport system.
Councillor Marlene Quinn, Merseytravel Deputy Chair said:-
"This funding will help to reduce smoke and pollution produced by
diesel bus exhausts, which can be harmful to health. It will also
help Merseytravel meet its commitment to minimise the impact of
transport and travel, to conserve resources and manage pollution and
waste"
The project has been funded through a LCR bid led by Merseytravel,
to the Department for Transport Clean Vehicle Technology Fund. This
was set up for local and transport authorities in England to apply
for Clean Vehicle Technology grants of a maximum of £500,000 towards
upgrading vehicles with technology to reduce emissions in areas of
poor air quality. |
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Changes to bin
collections
A further 20,000 properties
in Liverpool are to see changes in the way their bins are collected.
The second phase of the managed weekly collection service starts on
22 September 2014. Purple bins with household waste will be collected
1
week with blue bins for recycled material and green bins for garden
waste collected the following week.
This follows the successful introduction of managed weekly
collections in October last year to 112,000 properties. The
properties in the new phase are those, throughout the City, in which
there are issues about access and storage of bins and it needed to
be ensured that operational issues involved in their collection have
been resolved. "We have increased our recycling rate so far by about 5% to
31% following the introduction of managed weekly collections. and as more properties are moving towards the
new system of collection we would expect that to increase. Our objective is eventually
to have a recycling rate of 55%; it's a very ambitious target but
we should be aiming high. There are very good environmental reasons
why we should be recycling much more than we have in the past. But
also it costs us £32m a year in collecting, recycling and disposing
waste in the City at a time when we are facing £156m in cuts and if
we can reduce that figure it means we are better able to protect
services.
Increasing our recycling means that we are not burying waste in the
ground and having to pay as much landfill tax. Having a managed
weekly collection, which brings us into line with the majority of
Councils throughout the country, has already been shown to improve
our recycling rate, although there is still too much being put in
purple bins which should be recycled. A lot of information is
available about what should go in each bin if people are not sure.
The first phase was introduced largely successfully thanks to the
cooperation of residents and there is no reason why the new phase
should not be as equally successful. It makes a lot of sense
to carry out major changes such as this in stages so that any
problems which arise can be dealt with in bite-sized chunks."
Changes to the service do not apply to those houses which use
plastic sacks for waste collection.
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