Blaenau Gwent county borough council is the latest local authority to propose reducing the frequency of waste collections to once every three weeks, with councillors set to consider the measure at a meeting in September.
The South Wales councils environment scrutiny committee recommended moving from a fortnightly to a three-weekly collection calendar at a meeting last week (July 31), with the local authoritys executive to have final say over the issue at its next meeting, which is currently scheduled for September 3.
Proposals to move to a four-weekly collection regime were also considered, but not recommended for approval by the scrutiny committee.
The measure is intended to help to increase the boroughs recycling rate to the 70% statutory level required for Welsh local authorities by 2024/25. Councils will be fined around 100,000 for every 1% that they have failed to meet the target.
Blaenau Gwents recycling rate reached 52% during the 12 months to September 2013, according to figures published by the Welsh Government in February.
Three potential options were outlined by council officers in order to increase recycling rates, with options including maintaining a fortnightly residual waste collection service but reducing bin capacity to 140 litres, reducing collection frequency to three-weekly using the existing 240 litre containers or moving to a four-weekly service also with the existing containers.
Kerbside sort
Recyclables, which are collected via a kerbside sort system, will continue to be collected on a weekly basis, while the council is also planning to increase the materials it collects to include small WEEE, textiles and batteries. Food waste is also collected on a weekly basis.
The council favours moving to a three weekly service as this will not involve an investment in smaller containers estimated to be around 700,000 and would increase recycling by up to 10%.
Options considered by Blaenau Gwent:
- Retain fortnightly collections, but reduce bin capacity to 140l (est cost: 5m)
- Move to three-weekly collections, keeping existing 240l bins (est cost: 4.3m)
- Move to four-weekly collections, also using existing 240l containers (est cost: 4.3m)
Moving to a three weekly service is still expected to cost the county around 4.3 million, with money likely to be spent on new vehicles for both recyclable and residual waste.
Should it be approved, the change to the waste collection service would be aided by around 2 million in funding from the Welsh Governments Collaborative Change Programme.
Report
A spokeswoman for the local authority said: On Thursday July 31, a report was presented by the task and finishing group to scrutiny members in order to propose changes to the waste and recycling service collections.
The report proposed three options, of which scrutiny recommended that the next executive meeting approve option two from the business plan.
The proposed option two outlines that residents will keep their existing 240-litre wheeled bins, and residual waste will be collected every three weeks. Recycling and food waste will continue to be collected on a weekly basis, with additional items collected as part of the recycling such as batteries, small electrical items and textiles.
Related Links
If adopted, Blaenau Gwent would become the second Welsh authority to adopt a three-weekly collection system, with Gwynedd in North Wales to begin rolling out a three-weekly residual waste service from October (see letsrecycle.com story).
Bury council in England is also set to move to a three-weekly service (see letsrecycle.com story), while the Somerset Waste Partnership is also exploring the option of setting up a small scale trial of three-weekly collections in Taunton and Deane. Somersets plans will be considered at a meeting of the Partnerships board tomorrow (August 8).
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