City using a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to improve recycling rates

Nicholas Thomas, local democracy reporter

Waste bosses have admitted a “carrot and stick” approach is necessary if a city council is to keep up with Welsh Government recycling targets.

By the end of March next year, councils in Wales will have to recycle at least 70% of the waste they collect – the current statutory target is 64%.

Kerbside recycling in Newport is contracted by the city council to Wastesavers Ltd, the trading arm of a charitable trust.

While Newport City Council retains overall responsibility for the waste and recycling service, it works with Wastesavers to devise strategies for driving up recycling rates and avoiding costly government fines.

Sometimes, these prove to be controversial – as with the move to three-weekly bin collections in 2023.

Penny Goodwin, who leads Wastesavers in the city, said that decision “wasn’t taken lightly” but was necessary to try and make people think more about what they were putting in their bins.

Nearly half of what goes into those black bins for waste can actually be recycled, she told a council committee on Wednesday September 4.

Food waste

Wastesavers was finding around 24% of what was in black bags was food waste, which the firm collects separately each week, bagged in brown caddies, and sends to Aberdare for conversion into green energy.

Ms Goodwin said cutting the frequency of bin collections presented residents with an easy choice – would they rather their food scraps be collected every seven days, or left to sit in a bin for three weeks?

She added that food waste had since increased by 11%, proving it was possible to “squeeze” recyclables “out of the bin”.

This is the “balance of carrot and stick” Wastesavers uses to improve recycling rates, the committee heard.

Residents are encouraged to recycle via a system of containers that sometimes needs updating – the blue bag for cardboard and paper replaced a smaller plastic box as a direct response to more people receiving more packages from online retailers.

“I would say 98% of people out there are recycling and they are doing it right,” Ms Goodwin said.

But where more drastic action is needed, the “stick” is deployed – usually by crews refusing to empty a contaminated container, or by placing a warning sticker on a poorly-sorted bin, which if left unremedied can lead to fines.

Nuanced

But at the committee meeting, some councillors appealed for a more nuanced system of warning or punishing people for accidental breaches.

Cllr Jason Hughes said older residents, or people with dementia, may struggle with the recycling system and could make mistakes.

He suggested a system of flagging some properties where this may be an issue, so that crews could take a more sensitive approach.

Ms Goodwin said Wastesavers “can certainly work with you on that”.

Cllr Farzina Hussain, meanwhile, said some people’s recycling problems were down to a language barrier.

Silvia Gonzalez-Lopez, the council’s head of environment and public protection, said the council produces recycling factsheets in other languages, and urged councillors to get in touch if there were communities in their wards which could benefit from them.

“We don’t go and fine people indiscriminately,” Ms Gonzalez-Lopez said. “Sometimes [recycling breaches] are just a lack of knowledge.”