SUEZ helps residents of Milton Keynes recycle more than ever before

When the contract began in September 2023, SUEZ and Milton Keynes City Council embarked on a journey to improve recycling rates in the city whilst making its streets cleaner and greener.

It’s been one year since the contract commenced and wheelie bins were rolled out to 119,000 households in the city, and since then volume of MK’s ‘red and blue bin’ recycling has risen by more than a third, putting MK in the top 25% of all English councils for recycling.

Last September, SUEZ and the city council unveiled a greener and more modern waste collection service, including state of the art electric-powered waste trucks and wheelie bins for most of the city. MK’s wheelie bins have been emptied 22.5 million times by 57 SUEZ frontline collection crews in the last year, and the city council estimates its waste collection vehicles have travelled more than 750,000 miles, the equivalent of going around the Earth 30 times.

SUEZ and the city council are aiming to raise recycling rates even further to help Milton Keynes fulfil its aspiration of becoming the greenest city in the world. In the meantime, any ‘black bin’ rubbish that can’t be recycled continues to be used in a green and sustainable way, generating electricity to power many of the waste collection, cleaning, and landscape maintenance vehicles.

Peter Marshall, Contract General Manager at SUEZ recycling and recovery UK, said: “It has been a successful first year in our partnership with Milton Keynes City Council, and we look forward to continuing to work in partnership to drive improvements in recycling rates. Huge thanks to our teams for their dedication and hard work in successfully mobilising the contract ready for start-date in September 2023, and for the service they’ve delivered to the residents of Milton Keynes over the last year.”