City council has approved a loan for Liverpool Streetscene Services to acquire 20 refuse vehicles and 10 new vehicle bin lifts to improve the collection and recycling of household waste.
Liverpool is to spend £3.4m on a new fleet of refuse vehicles that will help the city reach its refuse and recycling targets.
The city council has approved a loan for Liverpool Streetscene Services (LSSL) to acquire 20 refuse vehicles and 10 new vehicle bin lifts to improve the collection and recycling of household waste.
The new vehicles will each be able to collect more than three tonnes of waste and fitted with rear wheel drive and a faster and safer operating mechanisms, will free up more than two hours a day for collections.
The new bin lifts will also make for a more efficient service allowing each vehicle to do 1,200 lifts a day compared to the current average of 925 – a 20% rise.
The first 10 vehicles of the brand new fuel efficient fleet will arrive in April with the second tranche to begin operations in October.
Providing a more effective refuse and recycling service the new fleet will help the city’s efforts to reach its target of recycling more than 55% of waste by 2020.
The capital loan – which does not affect the council’s annual budget – will be repaid over the next 10 years by LSSL, which was established in 2016 when the city council brought cleansing and refuse operations back under its control.
The request for the loan followed a LSSL review of the current fleet, which is hired and subject to high maintenance costs.
Councillor Steve Munby, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods who is also a director of LSSL, said: “This investment in a new fleet of refuse vehicles is a great statement of intent in our goal to make Liverpool a cleaner and greener city.
“The council inherited a tired and run down fleet which was inefficient, unreliable and costly.
“Having a brand new refuse fleet that is bigger, faster and safer will give the collection teams the right tools to ensure residents receive a more reliable service.
“However, we still need residents to take action by reducing, reusing and recycling their waste enable us to hit our targets and reduce the costs to them.’’