The big clean, green machine – how Bridgend hits its recycling targets

But these innovative models have played their part in helping turn the county of Bridgend from the second worst Welsh local authority for recycling two years ago to one of the top three today.  Bridgend Local Authority is officially the most improved area for recycling in Wales.

Huw Jenkins, Group Manager for Street Works at Bridgend County Borough Council shares his story on how they’ve made such big improvements.

Huw said:

“The changes that we’ve made here are dramatic.  We were recycling just 31% of our waste two years ago, and now we’re up to an impressive 54%.  That’s 2% above the Welsh Government’s target of 52% for this financial year and we’re thrilled with our achievements."

“We totally overhauled our strategy, who runs the service locally, how we collect and recycle materials and what residents have to do.    It is fair to say that the county of Bridgend fits hand in glove with the model strategy set by the Welsh Government."

“Our partners May Gurney collect materials to recycle every week and other residual waste on a fortnightly basis.  One of the big differences with our service is that most of the sorting takes place at the kerbside.  This gives us much higher quality and uncontaminated material to recycle, which in turn means we benefit from the best market prices. ”

Residents are given two black boxes and a hessian bag for items to recycle and a brown container for food waste.  The vehicle has separate compartments for glass, cardboard, paper, metal, plastics, food waste, clothes, textiles and batteries.  All materials are sorted on one vehicle and only residual waste for landfill is collected in a separate lorry.
 
Huw said:

“We were concerned initially that people might get confused with the changes but it’s gone remarkably well.  We had a lot of calls initially, but these soon settled down and people have responded really well to the new system.  Collections are always on the same day and everything that can be recycled or composted is collected every week, so it is definitely simpler in that sense."

In the Programme for Government, the Welsh Government made a commitment to support waste reduction and reduce the amount going to landfill.  In 2011/12 we provided £71 million in additional funding to local authorities to support recycling.

“The Welsh Government has been very supportive of local authorities with additional investment.  This helped us pay for these big changes,” said Huw.  “But now they are up and running, we are now saving more than £1 million a year.  This doesn’t even include savings in reduced waste to landfill which are significant.”

Bridgend County Borough Council has plans to build on this success moving forward.  Huw added: “We still have work to do in the lower performing areas and we’ve been talking to residents, posting flyers and holding focus groups.

“We are also discussing garden waste and trade waste and we’re starting to plan how to make improvements in these areas.
 
“The Welsh Government has set a 70% recycling target by 2025 which is a challenging goal.  But we are definitely on the right road to and we’re determined to pull out all the stops to reach this target”.