Council likely to face recycling fine for missing target by less than 1%

A county council could be facing a fine of £100,000 for missing the Welsh Government’s recycling target for this year by less than 1%.

Powys councillors were updated on the local authority’s performance against the 70% benchmark at a meeting of its Economy, Residents and Communities scrutiny committee on Monday (9 December)

Senior waste and recycling manager Ashley Collins told councillors that significant progress has been made in the last 10 years, with the recycling rate in 2013/2014 at 52.5 per cent.

‘Increase’

“Last year (2023/2024) the official figure was 68.1 per cent we’re hoping to get over 69 per cent this year which is slightly shy of the 70 per cent target but it’s still showing a really good increase,” he said.

Based on last year’s 68.1 per cent recycling figure the council would have been fined around £200,000 by the Welsh Government. The fine is calculated at £200 per tonne beneath the 70 per cent target

Mr Collins said: “Wales is second in the world and Powys is sixth or seventh in Wales at the moment there’s only about four or five that are going to hit the 70 per cent, the rest are doing everything they possibly can to reach to reach that target.

He explained that taking away the frequency of black “residual waste” bin collection had “increased” the recycling rate in the county.

Mr Collins said that a “waste composition analysis” from 2022 shows that 45 per cent of the waste residents put into the black bin could be recycled.

Food waste

A breakdown of this figures shows that: 20 per cent is food waste, 11 per cent could have gone into the kerbside recycling boxes, a further 11 per cent could have been taken to the HWRC (Household Waste Recycling Centre) and three per cent is garden waste.

Mr Collin said: “We have to get to that and it’s one of the main drivers of the strategy and food waste is a really big one.

“We collect it every week, why would anyone want to put it in the residual (black) bin for it to sit there for weeks.”

“It’s money going up in flames.”

Figures by Stats Wales which also include composting rates show that Powys comes ninth of the 22 local authorities.

Powys also comes in as joint ninth in the MyRecycling Wales local authority table.

Early next year a three-month public consultation will be launched into the council’s draft Sustainable Resource Strategy.

The “engagement process” will allow residents to have their say on how waste and recycling will be run in the county up to 2030.

Recycling

Councillors were told that using the words “waste” and “recycling” in the title of the document would be old-fashioned.

It is also a document that will help the council put together future business cases for Welsh Government funding to make sure that it’s facilities are “up to spec” for the future and able to handle more recycling.

The document already outlines that there could be fewer black rubbish bin collections, and people who don’t recycle their rubbish could eventually be fined.