In April, the Welsh local authority announced that all recyclables except for garden waste were being collected weekly in one vehicle and taken to Viridor’s Trident Park energy from waste plant as it was the “safest option” for crews (see letsrecycle.com story). There were concerns that recyclables might be contaminated and this was seen as the “safest way to dispose of potentially contaminated material”.
However, the council has this week announced that recycling and food waste kerbside collections will return to normal on 1 June.
Green waste, bulky uplifts and Cardiff’s glass bottle and jar trial will remain suspended.
Food caddies
The council is telling residents to begin using their brown kerbside food caddies again and to make sure all their recyclables go into their green bags for collections from the 1 June.
Michael Michael, cabinet member for clean streets, environment and recycling said: “I would like to thank our residents for working with us since lockdown began. They’ve been fantastic and adapted to the new collection regime, spreading the news in their communities about the changes.
“We have always said that we would seek to return to normal service arrangements as soon as we could, and we are now ready to begin doing that. I understand that there may be some concern that the complete service we offered before the outbreak isn’t quite ready to return yet, but I ask everyone to bear with us.”
Collection
The authority had continued to ask residents to separate recyclables during the temporary use of the energy from waste plant to help with the reinstatement of the recycling service. Cardiff operates an in-house collection service and the council says household recycling materials will be sent again to the councils own Lamby Way materials recycling facility.
The council recently introduced one-off garden waste collections for different areas in Cardiff throughout weekend in May.
Mr Michael continued: “We are working on plans to restore all our services as soon as we can including our Household Waste Recycling centres, green garden kerbside collections and bulky waste collections. I am delighted though that we can begin recycling again. I know it has concerned many residents and I want to thank them for their patience.”
And, the cabinet member commented on the green waste situation. He said: “We realise that residents will be disappointed that we cannot provide a kerbside green garden waste collection at the moment, but this is why we provided the one-off green garden waste collections during weekend in May. We are working on a booking system which will allow us to open our HWRCs as soon as it is safe to do so. Residents will have the option of taking garden waste to the HWRCs once we have this up and running”.
Cardiff recorded a 59% recycling rate in 2019 and serves around 350,000 residents.
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