New waste strategy crucial for Wrexham Council to avoid financial penalties

Wrexham’s new multi-million pound waste strategy has to secure approval if the council is to avoid a cut to its Revenue Support Grant by Welsh Government.
In a meeting prior to the strategy being presented to Wrexham County Borough Council’s Homes and Environment Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Dave Bithell, Lead Member for the Environment, and Chief Officer for Environment Darren Williams were told by Welsh Government that if recycling rates do not reach the Welsh benchmark of 70% it would receive fines of around £750,000 each for the last two years.
They were also warned that Wrexham Council’s annual central government grant – which funds essential services – would also be cut.
Wrexham’s current recycling rate is 65%. And in a further twist it was revealed that Welsh Government’s plan by 2035 is that councils will have to recycle 75% of their household waste.
The council’s recycling performance has slipped from the second best in Wales to the bottom three and the risk of serious financial penalties has forced the council to draft a new strategy.
More proposed key changes include introduce new large, weighted sacks for cardboard and paper recycling, issuing extra food waste bags, collecting Tetrapak cartons and batteries at the kerbside and a review of collection routes.
But Cllr Bithell ruled out consideration of three-weekly bin collections as have worked in areas like Flintshire.
“Members have made their position quite clear, they don’t want to go three-weekly bin collections at this point,” he said. “I don’t think the residents are ready for three-weekly collections yet.”
Diving into the detail of the strategy, members of the Homes and Environment Scrutiny Committee called for the return of ‘Recycle with Michael’ to spearhead the campaign.
“We used to have Recycle with Michael,” said Cllr Bithell. “Michael used to go around communities to do events.
“I know he’s disappeared but he needs to come back because we do need some sort of character out there to get our recycling back to where it used to be because we were once at the forefront of recycling in Wales.”
Mr Williams was challenged by Cllr Paul Pemberton on the value of investing in a new refuse vehicle fleet compared to the Welsh Government fine.
“We would normally look for an economic life of an HGV of maybe eight years,” he said. “After five years of service our vehicles, given what they have to do, they really come to the end of their life. We need to renew our fleet because otherwise they spend too much time off the road and it costs us in other ways.”
He said the strategy represented a package of measures to get Wrexham – which has an annual budget for waste services of around £30m – close to that magic 70% number.
“What we’re trying to do here is put together a package of measures that will allow us and you to achieve a pathway towards 70%. Will it get you there? Not unless you make that fundamental decision to achieve the Welsh Government blueprint. You’ve known that for a number of years.
“One of the main things that Welsh Government have told us is that the key to delivering a 70% recycling target is to strive for 60 litre black bin capacity. In Wrexham standard capacity is double that – it’s no coincidence that everybody else but us have done it. We’re nowhere near.”
The changes to garden waste – which will cost the council an estimated £700,000 in revenue from April next year – could be a quick win for the council however.
“We know that when the charge for garden waste was introduced – because of the savings we had to make – overnight we lost three percentage points of our recycling.
“If returning to a free service gets those back then Wrexham will be at 68% and it makes reaching our recycling target easier.”
But the biggest challenge facing the authority remains convincing people to sort waste themselves.
Data in the report shows that 34% of food waste is still being disposed of in black bins while overall 58% of rubbish currently thrown into black bins is actually recyclable.
“I’m not going to give examples but the reality is some communities are better at recycling than others,” said Cllr Bithell. “We need to make sure that we capture as much of our waste as possible and continue to promote repair, reuse and recycle. 
“We’ve failed for the last two years. So we just need to improve.”
Members of the committee agreed to recommend the strategy to the Executive Board but asked for more financial information when the authority’s next waste performance report comes before them. ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​

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By BBC LDRS ‌​‌​‌​​​‍‌​‌​​‌‌‌‍‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌​‌‌‌​‌‌‍‌​‌‌‌‌​​