A strategy that will improve the amount of waste that is recycled and composted throughout the city over the next five years is due to go to the Executive this week for decision.
The new strategy is the result of an extensive review proposing changes mainly to household waste collections, household recycling centres, commercial waste collection and increased recycling of litter and street sweepings.
By making improvements to the current collection scheme the council is aiming to challenge waste growth by encouraging waste minimisation and achieving much higher recycling rates over the next five years.
The strategy will also help the Council meet strict targets set by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) on the amount of waste sent to landfill, as well as the need to increase recycling and composting levels.
The Municipal Waste Management Strategy, if approved, would take Cardiff to the next sustainability level by maximising recycling and composting in as many areas of the city as possible and consultation carried out recently shows there is considerable public support for these new measures.
Covering the period 2011 to 2016, the strategy aims to ensure that the Council makes progress towards achieving the demanding targets set by WAG that by 2025, 70 per cent of household waste must be recycled or composted and a maximum of five per cent of waste should be sent to landfill.
Over recent years, great strides have been made in the way the Council has supported the public to change how their waste is managed in the city, including the introduction of the wheeled bin scheme, the redevelopment of Household Waste Recycling Centres across the city, the major investment in a Materials Reclamation Facility (MRF) at Lamby Way and the food waste collection service.
Year-on-year improvements in recycling performance of around five per cent a year have been achieved. However, despite this progress a business as usual approach to waste management is not an option for achieving WAG targets.
To achieve the new goals, with which failure to comply will potentially attract substantial fines for the Council, a preferred option for dealing with kerbside household waste is proposed including weekly food waste kerbside caddy collection, weekly green bag collection, fortnightly green garden waste collection and fortnightly black bin or bag residual waste collection plus a supporting hygiene nappy service. This service will enable qualifying households that register for special collections of nappies or incontinence pads, on the weeks that they would not be due to have a black bag or black bin collection, to have this waste collected on a weekly basis.
This means more services for recycling. These changes offer a more cost effective, but not cost cutting way to collect our recycling and waste streams as the Council would collect recycling more frequently. This is helped by proposals to make collection route more efficient by reorganising those collections routes that will also mean a day of collection change for some parts of the city.
Research demonstrates consistently that fortnightly collections boost recycling rates significantly when coupled with weekly collections of food waste while extensive consultation on waste management and collection services shows that 92 per cent of local people are currently satisfied with their waste collections services, 69 per cent would like recycling to be collected weekly and the proportion of households now putting out black bins/bags fortnightly has already risen to 36 per cent. The proposed changes in collections would take place in September 2011.
There have been resoundingly positive results for the trials of the kerbside caddy that contains food waste for collection (instead of bags). However to help with improvements, from the Spring all areas that are currently on a bag scheme will be provided with the kitchen kerbside caddy. All other areas will receive their caddies when the main waste collection changes are implemented in September.
The strategy also contains proposals for the Council to initiate a procurement exercise to deal with the long-term treatment of organic waste (food and garden waste) as well as plans for education and enforcement activity across the commercial sector to improve the presentation of waste and local environmental quality standards.
The strategy dovetails with the Council’s existing Carbon Lite Action Plan which highlights continued efforts to tackle climate change and steps to improve the city’s sustainability performance. A new approach to waste management is an essential strand of the ongoing work to adapt infrastructure and services in response to climate change.
Executive Member for Environment, Cllr Margaret Jones, said: “These changes are ultimately going to contribute towards a significant decrease in the amount of waste being sent to landfill by Cardiff. By diverting more we will create a more positive carbon benefit and help the environment.
“By helping people reduce the amount of waste they produce, encouraging them to recycle more of their waste and collecting food waste and green bags every week, we strongly believe that every household in Cardiff can help push our recycling figures up much higher.
“We have had lots of feedback from residents calling for a weekly green bag recycling collection and to have kerbside containers for food instead of bags and we believe this is the right way forward.”
A further more detailed implementation plan is proposed to be brought back to the Executive for further discussion later in the year ahead of the changes. Further communications and updates will be made through all media and web and direct to householders as the changes are agreed and implemented.
