Contractor: Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Job type: Supply only
Project Value: Approximately £50K
Waste plastic prevented from potential landfill: 18 tonnes.
Normandy Bin Bays manufactured from recycled plastic; encouraging recycling and keeping communal bin bay areas tidy. A win-win for Stoke City Housing.
GOplastic Ltd were contacted by Ruth Smith the former Landscape Architect for the Landscape Team at City of Stoke-on-Trent Council to look into a solution for their communal bin bay areas.
She was considering specifying our Normandy Bin Bay system for the Mier Estate neighbourhood project which is located to the south east of the North Staffordshire conurbation.
There are many solutions for bin bay storage using brickwork, timber and recycled plastic.
Recycled plastic bin bays certainly have their advantages, they are supplied fully assembled and ready to install. No brick work or holes need to be excavated for posts and no maintenance plans are required after installation. The panels won’t rot or splinter and are very easily cleaned.
At site meetings anchorage options were discussed to ensure that the bin bays could be fitted onto hard standing or into the ground with extended posts if required. The bin bays at 1.5 metres high allowed for 240 litre household wheelie bins to be used, and larger 1100 litre bins if required.
For communal storage within shared grounds adjacent to apartment buildings this solution provided open storage for a number of bins.
The preferred location is close to the street boundary so that bins do not have to be wheeled out by residents on collection days.
Drawings similar to the diagram below were produced by the architect and the designs allowed for some bin bays to take up to 18 standard litter bins.
Stoke City specified Normandy panels with extended posts for root anchorage. This allowed for the panels to be staggered where they were fitted into areas with a gradient.
Our requirements and obligations around waste and recycling have changed.
Weekly refuse collections from the front of a property with a small metal bin 80 or 90 centimetres high which could be discretely hidden again in the back garden or behind a small wall have gone. We now have several more and often larger litter bins to contain.
Specifying and purchasing products with a high recycled-content is an easily actionable step that organisations can take to demonstrate their delivery of policy on sustainability.
The Normandy Bin Bay System proved to be the perfect louvered solution for Stoke City Housing, allowing them to use sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative products to help keep the streets in this part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent neat and tidy.