Residents living in ‘bag areas’ of the city will now have be limited to three red-striped bags per fortnight in which to dispose of their residual waste.
The council has warned that any householders who continue to put out black sacks that their waste will not be picked up by collection crews. Residents who flout the new rules could face a £100 fine.
In other parts of the city, the council has started replacing 240-litre wheeled bins with smaller, 140L containers for refuse collections. These residents are also receiving new reusable sacks for garden waste.
Elsewhere, some 4,000 households that have traditionally put out bags for collection have also received 140L wheeled bins to dispose of their refuse. Recycling collections remain unaffected.
Targets
The three-prong overhaul of the service has been launched to reduce residual waste capacity and boost recycling in the city. It is hoped the restriction will help Cardiff avoid an £800,000 fine that could be imposed on Welsh councils that do not meet the Government’s 58% recycling target by 2016.
In 2013/14, Cardiff’s recycling rate fell from 52.1% to 49.7%, making it the only Welsh council to drop below last year’s statutory target of 52% (see letsrecycle.com story).
The capacity restriction was one of two options that the council put to residents in the city, with the other a switch from fortnightly to monthly residual waste collections. At the time, the capacity restriction was deemed to be ‘more popular’.
Despite this the changes have been met with resistance from some householders and opposition councillors, who have claimed the Labour-run council ran an inadequate consultation process. Residents protesting the service change marched on Cardiff City Hall with their new wheeled bins on Thursday, claiming they did not have enough space to store the new containers.
Meanwhile, revelations published in Wales Online last week that residents requiring extra red-striped bags for ‘exceptional reasons’ will have to pay £1.85 plus a minimum commercial collection service charge of £10 has also added fuel to the fire.
Bins
Councillor Bob Derbyshire, cabinet member for the environment, said he was aware that ‘a few residents’ had not welcomed the service change but argued 75% of those surveyed had agreed to expand the use of wheeled bins on the city.
He added that Cardiff was projected to recycle 53% of its waste in 2013/14, 5% below the 2016 target. Given that councils can be fined up to £400,000 for each 1% missed, this could mean a £2 million penalty.
Mr Derbyshire said: “We know from other authorities who’ve carried out similar measures that these changes work. An area I know very well – Trafford and Salford – saw a 10% increase in household recycling when they introduced smaller bins. Here in Wales, Monmouth achieved a 30% increase in recycling when they introduced a maximum of two bags a fortnight for general waste. Swansea achieved a 5% recycling increase when they moved to a maximum of three bags a fortnight.”
“The new changes will cost just under £2million but when this is compared to the fines that could be imposed if statutory recycling targets are missed, this is certainly money well spent.”
Capacity
Councillor Derbyshire’s defence of the capacity restriction comes after he was forced to quell similar concerns from voices within Cardiff’s environmental scrutiny committee earlier this year, who questioned the ‘exceptionally high’ target set by the Welsh Government.
In a letter to the councillor, the committee argued the council was stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’ adding that the targets were ‘completely unrealistic’ for inner city areas (see letsrecycle.com story).
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