The Great Recycling Swindle: Cardiff Recycling Sham!

Recycling industry insiders have revealed that Cardiff residents’ waste, which is picked up all in one bag without being separated, ends up far too mixed & contaminated to be recycled effectively.
Much of our green bag waste is sold on to dealers who export it halfway across the world to Indonesia, India & China, burning tonnes of carbon dioxide to dump rubbish on poorer people in the global South.
This shocking situation is repeated in most UK towns. Our waste should be recycled separately by local operations in the UK, but because it is usually collected mixed together in one bag, most paper mills, plastics, & glass handlers find it impossible to work with. Many UK paper mills have had to close down because councils are too short-sighted to implement proper recycling schemes to provide them with clean materials.
One insider said: “Cardiff Council will claim that it sends its paper to the paper mill at Ayelsford in Kent to be recycled. But none of the kerbside recycling from Cardiff gets there. By the time it’s been picked up & taken to the central depot it’s been contaminated by broken glass & other materials, & it’s mostly unusable. I know this because I’ve spoken to people at the paper mills. I don’t know exactly where it gets sent, but it stands to reason that if the UK recyclers are refusing it, it’ll be sold by middle-men to the big dealers in the Far East.”
Another industry expert, who also prefers to remain anonymous, said that lots of our waste ends up in the global South where it is picked over by poor labourers in dangerous & unsanitary conditions. “There are containers full of mixed materials illegally exported to developing countries where health & safety is not a consideration & where children sift through what we would call landfill sites. I’ve heard rumours that Cardiff’s so-called recycled waste gets sent to Indonesia, but only a few people know for sure. They don’t want to broadcast it”.
Cardiff Council only recently opened the expensive recycling "sorting" facility at Lamby Way. It essentially spent millions of tax payers money on what is essentially an environmentally damaging white elephant. One source said, “Lamby Way is a complete disaster. All it produces is low-grade contaminated waste that’s next to useless. That place was a total waste of money”.
Another explained that big & costly separating plants like Lamby Way wouldn’t be necessary if the public were asked to do the job in the home, or if collectors separated on collection. “Getting individuals separating waste in the home is not difficult – it’s common practice in other European countries like Germany, & it’s also done in Newport!”
One big difference in the Newport recycling method: apart from separating waste at source, not exporting it, & actually recycling it, is that it isn’t run by the council or outsourced to a business, but run by a community group.