NPT thanks residents for their recycling efforts

Residents in Neath Port Talbot are doing a great job in recycling their household waste.

Latest figures from an all-Wales research project to find out about household waste show that residual waste, that is waste which is not recycled but put out in black bags and wheelie bins, has reduced by 16,000 tonnes since 2009 when the study was last carried out.

This is good news as recycling more waste not only helps save money in landfill tax and the environment, but it also helps the Council achieve strict recycling targets set by the Welsh Government, avoiding costly fines if they are not achieved.

The research project looks at the type of residual waste generated and whether any of this could have been recycled; the findings will help us improve our waste and recycling services and identify areas where we need to do more work to help residents recycle more.

The latest analysis shows that residents in Neath Port Talbot are really good at recycling things like glass, plastic bottles and cans, but it also shows that there is still a significant amount of waste thrown out that could have been recycled.

Food waste in particular is one area where we could do a lot better, with a lot of the food waste in black bags and bins found still in its packaging.

Food waste is a major issue. According to the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, we throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have been eaten. It’s costing us £12.5bn a year and is bad for the environment too.

This means that each month, the average family throws away almost £60 of good food that was bought but not eaten.

There are lots of reasons why food may be wasted including buying too much, preparing too much, not having time to plan meals, or confusion over use-by dates; and there are many sources of information to help people reduce food waste.

Here in Neath Port Talbot, the Council will do a number of things over the next few weeks to help residents recycle more food waste. This includes the roll-out of the Recycle+ service to another 20,000 households with more planned to receive the service by the end of the year. During the summer the recycling team will also be out and about in local communities to promote food waste recycling.

Neath Port Talbot is performing well in terms of recycling and is on course to achieve the 2015/16 target of 58%.

Increasing our efforts to recycle more and reduce residual waste even further will go a long way in helping to achieve the next target of 64% by 2020.

Findings from the waste analysis can be found on the Council’s website www.npt.gov.uk/recyclemorefoodwaste