Cardiff City Council is planning to roll out its new twin bin collection scheme to all households, after the first areas under the scheme recorded a 42% recycling and composting rate.

There are currently 17,000 properties on the scheme in the Welsh capital with a further 30,000 being added during 2004 and 50,000 the year after. The scheme involves a green bin for green waste, a green bag for dry recyclables and a black bin for residual waste.

John Minihane of Cardiff City Council: “With the twin bin system we have 17,000 properties involved and are seeing a 42%
recycling rate.  We have about 17 routes in place and we are seeing 38-50% on the different routes with 42% average. We are hoping to get that when we expand the collections and if we do we will be very close to meeting our targets for 2009-10.”

He added that combined with other schemes for terraced houses, the council should have almost 100% coverage of kerbside collections by the end of 2006.

Cardiff Council has selected Plastic Omnium Urban Systems for its £3-£5 million contract to supply the 180-250,000 wheelie bins over the next five years as the city rolls out its twin-bin scheme.

Working with Staffordshire based GW Plastics Recycling, Plastic Omnium will remove any of the council’s unwanted household bins for recycling when it delivers the replacement 240 litre green and grey containers.
 

Mr. Minihane said that it was important that the successful company should include recycling of old bins. “We’ve never had wheeled bins in Cardiff, however, about 10 to 15 years ago they changed the boundaries and circa 3,000 households with wheeled bins joined our authority. So there are some quite old bins and we felt that with the new twin bin scheme it was time to replace them.”

Jon Whiley, UK Services Manager for Plastic Omnium, explained that the company would also continue to take back bins throughout the contract and provide the council with a certificate showing the amount of plastic recycled.  “This is a very big project. All the bins that are unusable, either broken or vandalized, will be taken back.” Initially, GW Plastics Recycling will granulate and recycle the 3,000 old wheeled bins.  Mark Gilbert, Sales Director for GW Plastics Recycling, said the companies were looking to work together on similar contracts in the future. ”The idea is that when Plastic Omnium tenders for a contract they include a service that means when they deliver the new bins they take away the old ones too,” Mr. Gilbert said.

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