Public urged to wash out cans and bottles for recycling

The council, which serves 73,112 households, already offers a pilot weekly kerbside service to 10,000 homes, which it described as “very successful” with a 90% take up by residents.

Recyclables collected in the blue boxes, which are manufactured by Taylor, are: paper, cardboard, glass, cans and plastics.

Now the service is to be extended to 2,500 homes in the Llanelli area and 7,500 in the Amman Valley at the end of the month. Funding support for the scheme has come from the Welsh Assembly's Sustainable Waste Management funding for recycling schemes.

However, there have been problems with contamination of recyclables and the council has recently told residents in the kerbside collection areas of the need to keep materials clean.

The authority said that some residents were “dumping unwashed cans and half-full drink bottles into the recycling boxes. It means the items have to be sorted and cleaned before they can be recycled.”

Complaints
The council has also urged residents to bag any shredded paper before placing it in the boxes. Principal waste service officer Hywel Thomas said: “The scheme has been a huge success but we have had complaints that some people are putting in items that should not be included.

“It is causing problems for the operators, who are handling the waste and it means the rubbish smells quite badly by the time it gets to the processing plant. We are delighted by the public response, but we are appealing to everyone to help us sort this small problem out.

“If the public can help us it would make the process a great deal easier.”
The recyclables are collected on the same day as residual waste into separate vehicles and taken to depots in Llanelli or Carmarthen before being sent to a processor for recycling.

Carmarthenshire is also trialling a brown bag waste project in 5,000 homes in the Llandovery area of the county which has been using pink bags for recyclables over the past year. Householders are being urged to fill the brown bags with food scraps and garden waste. “Food soaked paper” and cardboard are included, along with some food containers with the material collected on the same day as recycling sacks. The brown bag material is taken to a waste transfer station operated by LAS in Lampeter to be turned into a “fertiliser”.