Cardiff students are calling for more to be done to make sure they have the correct bins to be able to recycle properly. This comes as the Welsh Government launch its 2023 recycling focus this week, ‘Power of food waste recycling’.
But food recycling isn’t as accessible as it sounds to some people. Some Cardiff students are saying that they weren’t given a food caddy when moving into student accommodation and student housing and therefore could not recycle their food.
Lauren Griffiths who studies Optometry at Cardiff University said “to make more people recycle, the government needs to put more funding into student residence halls around Cardiff to actually have the bins to be able to recycle”.
She said “for two months we didn’t have a food waste bin” by adding that “we had to put it all into the main bin which obviously meant that we were taking that one out more often, and using more black bags than we were normally”.
She said that “to make more people recycle, the government needs to put more funding into student residence halls around Cardiff to actually have the bins to be able to recycle”.
Cardiff Council says it’s “their [students] responsibility to do this, and not the council”. They also said that “The waste bins are issued to a property, rather than a person”.
Cardiff’s recycling rate is 58%, the lowest recycling rate of all local authorities in Wales, and a significant drop compared to the highest rate – 74% in Pembrokeshire. But the campaign aims to increase the recycling rates by focusing on the importance of recycling food waste and the possibility of using the waste as energy.