Since early April 2014, Swansea residents have been restricted to putting out a maximum of three 70-litre residual waste bags for collection by the council every fortnight, a move aimed at increasing recycling and cutting the amount of waste sent to landfill.
Previously there had been no limit on the number of bags that residents could present for collection, but the council said that landfill disposal was costing as much as £4 million per year.
Provisional results from the first year of the ‘Keep it to 3’ scheme released by the council this month suggest that the overall amount of residual waste collected has fallen from 30,660 tonnes in 2013/14 to 22,770 tonnes in 2014/15.
Figures published by the Welsh Government also suggest that Swansea’s recycling rate may also be seeing an increase, having moved from 52.3% in April to June 2013 and 53.9% in July to September 2013 to 59.5% in April to June 2014 and 58.5% in July to September 2014.
Changes to the residual waste collection arrangement were also coupled with a door-to-door communications campaign to encourage households to use the recycling services available to them.
Collection
The council operates in-house fortnightly kerbside collections of waste and recycling, with glass and metals in one green bag, paper and card in another green bag, as well as a separate pink bag for plastics.
Commenting on the first year of the scheme, councillor Mark Thomas, the council’s cabinet member for environment & transportation, said: “The changes we made to collections including the introduction of a limit have been a real success so far. We have significantly reduced the amount of waste we send to landfill.
“The aim has always been to encourage residents to make better use of our kerbside recycling services so that we can dispose of household waste in a better way than simply burying it in the ground.
“I’m delighted that the changes have had a positive impact and that the residents have worked so hard with us to achieve the increase in recycling.
“We are certainly going in the right direction and we are doing all we can to give residents the opportunities to recycle and help us meet these targets.”
Councils in Wales have been set a target to recycle 58% waste by March 2016. Failure to do so could result in council being fined.
Swansea city council also recently launched a trial plastics collection in the city using reusable pink sacks instead of disposable pink bags. If successful, it could be rolled out across the city to improve the ability to process the plastics collected and help the council save on annual costs for buying disposable bags.
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