A recycling trial – which has seen 10,000 homes across Cardiff separate their recyclable waste at the kerbside – has proven so effective that the Council is looking to buy 41 additional specially designed trucks so the scheme can be rolled out across the city.
Residents who took part in the recycling pilot were given reusable red and blue sacks to separate their recycling into, with paper and cardboard going into red sacks, and plastic, tin and metals into blue sacks. Residents in the trial areas were already using a separate container for glass jars and bottles.
The results, when compared with the rest of the city where residents put all recyclables into green plastic bags, were startling. The contamination rate – items that are put out for recycling but cannot be recycled – reduced from 30% to approximately 6%.
Cllr Caro Wild, Cabinet Member for Climate Change at Cardiff Council, said: “Asking residents to separate their recyclables at the kerbside has proven to be a remarkably effective ways of reducing contamination and producing better quality recyclable material. In parts of the city where people put all their recycling into green plastic bags we find lots of stuff in there which can’t be recycled like food waste and nappies. Items that affect the quality of the recyclables we collect.
“The pilot scheme has done brilliantly at eliminating a lot of these issues, so much so, we want to look at rolling the scheme out across the city and from November we will look to bring another 40,000 homes onto the scheme, which is fantastic because we know people really care about the environment and really want to do everything they can to make a difference. This new way of preparing recyclables in separate containers for collection will also help make a difference to the city’s recycling targets, pushing us closer to that Welsh Government target where 70% of all our waste collected at the kerbside will be recyclable by 2025. The more work we do together on this then the more waste we will reduce, reuse and recycle.”
If Cardiff Council’s Cabinet approve the procurement at its meeting on 13 July, the council will start the tender process to invest £9.7m of capital funding into the city’s recycling services. Then over a 3-year period the new three-bag recycling collection system will be rolled out to residents across the city.
Cardiff Council’s Environmental Scrutiny Committee will consider the decision at 4.40pm on Thursday, 6 July.
