The long-term future of the current waste collection contract with Kier is up for discussion at a Bridgend Council scrutiny committee meeting next week (pdf).
The contract was signed in 2017 and it’s fair to say there were more than a few teething problems at the beginning.
Since then the service has stabilised – though missed collections do still happen (though not as often as at the start of the contract).
In terms of how the current contract is performing overall, the numbers look good:
- In 2019-20, 67.6% of household waste in Bridgend county was recycled. BCBC expect this to increase in 2020-21 but are awaiting the final figures.
- 91% of waste collected at tips is recycled.
- The cost of blue bag collections in Bridgend is £19.31-per-household, per-year and the cost of dry recycling collections is £20.40; the latter is around the Welsh average, while the former is below the Welsh average.
- Bridgend residents recycle more-by-weight (2,700kg-per-collection) than the Welsh average (1,366kg) and produce less blue/black bag waste (180kg-per-household, per-year) than the Welsh average (255kg).
- There were reportedly only 990 missed collections in Bridgend county (the equivalent of 0.01% of all collections) during 2018-19 compared to the Welsh average of 4,527.
- 71% of people surveyed in 2019 thought rubbish collections in Bridgend were either good or very good, compared to 10% who thought they were either poor or very poor.
It’s unclear how these figures will have been impacted by the pandemic, with more people staying at home (and probably producing more domestic waste) as well as restrictions on visits to tips and interruption to recycling collections.
Some of the short-term future developments highlighted in the report include:
- A new street litter service – set to start this month – will recycle waste collected from on-street bins, fly-tipping clear ups and highways. It’s hoped this will boost county-wide recycling rates by up to 1%.
- The imminent opening of the new Pyle household recycling centre.
- A campaign to increase food waste recycling; the report says up to 20% of blue/black bag waste is food waste.
- A campaign to increase take-up of the absorbent products/purple bag recycling service.
The current contract with Kier is set to end in April 2024, though there’s an option to trigger a seven-year extension that would take it up to April 2031.
However, there’s a level of uncertainty around Welsh Government environment priorities going forward. This includes the possible introduction of a deposit return scheme for drinks containers, extended producer responsibility for recycling, possible changes to recycling targets and the development of low-emission waste collection vehicles.
Due to these uncertainties, officers believe a short two-to-three-year extension to the current contract with Kier should be considered – which would take it up to April 2026 or 2027. They raise the possibility that waste collections could be brought in-house in the future depending on how things pan out in the next few years.
