With a national recycling rate of over 65%, Wales is one of the highest recycling nations in the World. This has been achieved in large part due to people recycling at home in every part of Wales which, collectively has made a huge national difference.
As part of Welsh Government's 'Beyond Recycling' Strategy (external website), Denbighshire County Council is expected to recycle 70% of the waste it collects by 2025.
Recycling and managing our waste helps us to look after our planet by reducing our carbon footprint. It also helps us to boost the Welsh Circular Economy by re-using things and providing recycled resources to make new products, which uses much less energy than processing new, raw materials.
We are going to meet this challenge by collecting more recycling every week. The new, expanded service will let people recycle everything they can and only use their non-recyclable waste containers for materials that we cannot process currently. Our new approach will help keep different types of recycling separate, improving the quality of the recycling we collect so that more of these materials can be used as new products within the UK economy.
Our non-recyclable waste is sent to a waste-to-energy plant in Deeside (external website), where it’s safely burned and used to make electricity. This process means that only a small percentage of waste needs to be sent to landfill, which in turn limits the release of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) and pollution of the land from chemicals and microplastics.
In Denbighshire, all food waste must be recycled and cannot go in your non-recyclable waste bin. Fortunately, we have an anaerobic digestion facility (external website), where food waste is broken down to produce 'biogas', which is collected and used to generate 'green energy' that powers homes and communities. It also creates bio-fertiliser than can be used in farming and for land regeneration.
Image design by Freepik (external website)