A RECYCLING boom has coincided with closures at sites that handle materials such as household furniture – leading to rubbish piling up at a council tip.
Photographs show mounds of items waiting to be sorted at Torfaen’s household recycling centre in New Inn with the bay for wood and timber filled with items waiting to be sorted and no room for any more items to be deposited.
The site is operated by FCC Environment on behalf of Torfaen Borough Council which has said household recycling centres across the UK are impacted by an increase in materials being brought to them and issues with “recycling end markets”.
A regular visitor to the site, from Cwmbran, who asked not to be named, said he was struck by the state of the site compared to his previous visit a month earlier.
“There was all sorts of debris in front of the bays where cars normally park,” he said: “It was unbelievable and last month the area was pristine.
“There are no signs to say ‘no more wood’ or ‘we’re full’.”
He questioned the safety of the site which is open to the public to deposit items and said he was concerned at staffing levels and claimed he was told a large number of complaints had been made to the council.
Torfaen Borough Council said an increase in materials, and plants that process or burn recycled wood, being closed has resulted in an additional 30,000 tonnes of wood entering the system, nationally, every week meaning at times space between skips at the centre have had to be used for storage which it says is normal practice “during extremely busy times”.
A spokeswoman said: “Torfaen, like the rest of the UK household recycling centre network, is experiencing significant and unprecedented uplifts in the volume of materials being brought for recycling.”
She added the council is working with FCC to manage the issues.
According to the council, April saw a 30 per cent increase in visitor numbers on recent months, with waste volumes in April around 10 per cent higher than previous years.
The month also saw the highest tonnage rates at the centre since black bag sorting was introduced in 2019, which the council says it vital to increasing recycling rates.
Tonnage for May, according to the council, is on track to be 33 per cent higher than previous years.
A council spokeswoman said: “The increase in tonnage has coincided with issues with recycling end markets, particularly for carpet and wood. A number of board mills and biomass plants are closed due to a combination of scheduled and un-scheduled maintenance. These closures have resulted in the market being flooded with an additional 30,000 tonnes per week of wood and this has created issues across the recycling sector.”
The council has also said staffing levels at the centre have only reduced by one, from six to five, at weekends and was achieved through changes in shift patterns and didn’t result in any redundancies. It said it hasn’t received any formal complaints in April or so far in May.
Torfaen’s overall recycling rate has been increasing in recent year but the council says it is still short of the Welsh Government’s target of reaching 70 per cent of all its waste being recycled, which should have been achieved in 2024/25.
In recent years the household recycling centre has recycled more than 80 per cent of the items brought to it.