According to a report due to be discussed by councillors at an environmental scrutiny committee meeting tomorrow (October 7), there is a need to make changes to the city’s in-house collection services in order to meet statutory recycling targets and comply with forthcoming TEEP regulations on recycling collections.
Statutory targets in Wales require councils to achieve a recycling rate of 52% in 2014/15, rising to 58% in 2015/16, 64% in 2019/20 and 70% in 2024/25. Failure to meet the targets carries a £200 per tonne penalty.
And, in order to reach the 2019/20 target of 64%, Cardiff estimates that it will need to recycle around 32,000 tonnes of additional waste each year. The current recycling volume in Cardiff is 86,578 tonnes per year.
However, Cardiff’s recycling rate fell to 50% last year, having achieved a rate of 52% in 2012/13.
Fines
As a result, the council is concerned it could face penalty fines from the Welsh Government in excess of £800,000 – equating to more than £21 million between now and 2020 – and “therefore, it is imperative that the council takes steps to improve its recycling performance”, the report states.
According to the report, the household recycling rate “has now plateaued and is unlikely to change without a service change to drive recycling out of the residual waste bins and bags”.
And, following waste analysis, the council believes almost half of what is thrown away as residual waste “could be easily recycled” and that therefore “the focus must be on driving this recycling out of the general waste”.
The report claims that “education and persuasion will be insufficient to drive recycling” and thus “restricting the quantities of general waste that people can present is required” – either through moving to four-weekly collections or by providing smaller 140-litre wheeled waste bins instead of the current 240-litre capacity containers.
Cardiff
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Currently, Cardiff council collects residual household waste in black bags or black wheeled bins on a fortnightly basis, while both food waste and commingled recycling is collected every week.
Garden waste is also collected every two weeks, although over the winter period this will move to every four weeks.
Any proposed service changes decided on following the meeting this week will then go out for consultation as part of the draft waste management strategy 2015-2018 before anticipated implementation in April 2015.
The draft strategy follows the council’s waste consultation last year, which asked for residents’ views on a number of options, including the move to a monthly residual waste collection (see letsrecycle.com story).
TEEP
In addition, the report sets out the need to comply with separate collection legislation in the European Commission’s Waste Framework Directive.
The legislation comes into force in 2015, from which point councils will need to present recycled materials separately for collection unless it is not technically, environmentally and economically practicable to (TEEP) do so.
Three recycling collection options are set out in the report and will be assessed with a full business case over the coming months. These are: to continue with current commingled collections; to move to a kerbside sort system; or to collect glass and paper separately through a ‘twin stream’ system.
Other measures being considered to boost Cardiff’s recycling rate include improving household waste and recycling centres (HWRCs) and procuring a street sweepings recycling contractor for next year.
Collections
Although Communities Secretary Eris Pickles has regularly voiced his strong support for households having waste collected every week, a number of councils in England and Wales have moved to or are considering residual waste collections every three or four weeks to try and boost recycling rates and make financial savings.
Gwynedd council in North West Wales has agreed to switch to collecting residual waste every three weeks (see letsrecycle.com story).
Falkirk council in Scotland has been trialling three-weekly waste collections (see letsrecycle.com story), while Bury council also agreed to move to a three-weekly waste collection in July 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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