HOUSEHOLDERS could be able to recycle soft or stretchy plastic, and products such as used nappies, at the kerbside in future.
Despite drives to boost recycling by councils across Wales they still have trouble either sorting some materials or finding markets that can put them to new use.
Last week the Local Democracy Reporting Service told how householder Alison James-Herbert was surprised to find council crews hadn’t taken her bag of plastic recycling as it contained “soft plastic”.
Mrs James-Herbert, who said she diligently sorts her household waste, hadn’t realised the material wasn’t supposed to be placed in with other plastics and said: “It wasn’t collected because it had the wrong waste, but I hadn’t put anything other than plastic in it.”
Her local authority, Monmouthshire, said it doesn’t collect soft plastics or film as they have to be removed during the sorting process and education officers have checking bags and advising households if they’ve found the wrong material in bags. Soft plastics can be recycled through collection points in supermarkets.
In neighbouring Torfaen a new recycling strategy is being drawn up by the borough council which has lagged behind other Welsh councils in recent years.
The new draft strategy aims to outline how it can achieve the 70 per cent recycling target during the life of the plan from 2025 to 2030.
Monmouthshire had the second-best recycling rate, at 72 per cent, among the 22 Welsh local authorities in 2023/24 and was one of only eight councils to hit the 70 per cent target ahead of its introduction in the 2024/25 financial year.
Torfaen by contrast recycled just 64 per cent of its waste in 2023/24 but that was still an improvement on some previous years.
The new strategy aims to improve the council’s recycling service, increase its recycling, ensure it has the infrastructure to do so, boost business recycling, minimise waste and decarbonise its services as part of six priority point plan.
It aims to use digital technology to increase recycling including in better recording how it manages assisted collections for those unable to put their bins out and provide it with better data.
The council wants to increase the amount of materials it can recycle including reviewing and expanding kerbside collections so people cant recycle items like nappies, stretchy plastic, and small electrical waste.
It also wants to support repair cafes and other repair and reuse services, which will also avoid items being thrown away as well as working with housing associations and private landlords so people living in flats can recycle at home.
The council has already agreed to operate an enforcement team to ensure households follow rules around waste and recyling collections and which will have the power to issue fines.
The strategy is due to be discussed by the council’s economy and environment scrutiny committee on Thursday, March 6 at 4pm.