Case Study: East Northamptonshire Council achieves £1.5M savings and reduces refuse collection vehicles from 10 to 6 with Ordnance Survey

East Northamptonshire Council - Customer Case Study

East Northamptonshire Council awarded a seven‑year waste, recycling and street‑cleansing contract to Kier Environmental in 2010. The council’s brief was to redesign collection rounds to cut frontline refuse collection vehicles from 10 to 6 while improving recycling rates and diverting more waste from landfill; Kier Environmental applied RouteSmart route‑optimisation software (Integrated Skills) together with Ordnance Survey MasterMap data and the council’s LLPG to plan the new service.

Kier Environmental used RouteSmart and OS MasterMap/LLPG data to calculate, optimise and balance urban and rural rounds, and introduced alternate‑weekly two‑bin collections for 96% of households, larger 240L recycling bins and weekly food caddies. The changes reduced vehicles to six and delivered over £1,500,000 in contract savings, cut CO2 emissions by 114 tonnes, increased recycling to over 50% and reduced landfill by 4,100 tonnes between Aug–Dec 2011 (about £200,000 saved in landfill tax).

East Northamptonshire Council

Charlotte Tompkins

Waste Manager