A new way for people to recycle is being extended to include more homes from Cardiff from this week (July 14). Some 47,000 houses have already been using the new segregated recycling system and it is now being extended further.
The new system, known as the "sack sort" scheme, forces residents to separate their recycling contents into different caddies. The council has said this increases the quality of the recycling and lowers the contamination rate of disposed of recycling from 30% to 4% on average. For the latest Cardiff news, sign up to our newsletter here
Cardiff Council has been delivering the new containers to the affected areas along with a notice of how to properly use them. Residents have been issued with a new blue caddy for glass bottles and jars; a red sack for metals, plastics and food and drink cartons; and a reusable blue sack for cardboard and paper.
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In February this year, the council introduced the new scheme to 37,000 properties in Cardiff after a trial that took place in 2022 and 2023 produced positive results. The new system has been controversial since being introduced as people shared their concerns earlier this year.
It came after pictures were shared online which showed separated recycling being mixed together in one bin lorry. However, Cardiff Council said: "We use vehicles with two separate compartments for your recycling. Items from the blue sack go into one side of the vehicle and items from the red sack go into the other. We have a different vehicle to collect the glass recycling."
If the vehicles with separate chambers were unavailable for any reason then, as a contingency plan, and to ensure collections still happened, the council might use a vehicle which collected the recycling in one chamber and then this recycling was sorted back at the recycling centre, the local authority said This didn’t change the quality of the recycling collected in the vehicle, they added.
The new phase of the rollout will begin from Sunday, July 14, and the plastic green recycling bags will no longer be collected from this date in the areas experiencing the change. The areas already using the scheme in Cardiff are: Pentyrch, Heath West, Radyr, Ely, Llandaff, Trowbridge, Gabalfa or Rhiwbina.
The areas that will now be switching to the new system from July are: Caerau, Whitchurch, Heath East, Llandaff north, Adamsdown, Rumney, Lisvane, Penylan, Pontprennau, Tongwynlais and St Fagans. Residents who live in apartments will not have to switch to the system as trails will be taking place to develop a recycling system for flats and apartments.
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