Ceredigion County Council has decided to roll out a shiny new bit of policy brilliance: starting 23 June 2025, you’re allowed three 60-litre black bags of residual waste every three weeks. That’s one bag a week. Oh, and if you try to play smart and overstuff them? They’ll slap a sticker on the extra bag and leave it festering on your kerb like some kind of punishment ritual.
Rejected black bag
Why? Because apparently half of what people throw out could be recycled — mostly food waste, they say. That’s their justification. But what they’re really doing is cutting off the last fallback — you can’t even take your overflow to the local site unless it’s neatly sorted to their specs. Translation: no more convenience. Just more rules.
This is classic top-down, we-know-better-than-you policymaking. The kind where some committee full of people who haven’t dealt with a full bin in a decade decides how your household should function. Yes, recycling matters. No, this isn’t how you make it better.
And of course, there’s a “special exception” process if you actually need more capacity. But good luck with that. You’ll need to fill out forms, get a visit, and use council-branded bags like some weird waste caste system. It’s a mess. Bureaucracy for the sake of looking like they’re doing something.
They trot out the usual political candy: “It’ll save money,” “Lower Council Tax,” “Better recycling rates.” Yeah, right. This is just cost-shifting with a coat of green paint. You pay less upfront and more in fines, paperwork, or sheer hassle. It’s not a tax cut — it’s an accountability dodge.
Ceredigion is already doing well — over 70% recycling rate. This whole policy is about chasing an arbitrary number. Pushing to 80% by hammering residents with more restrictions? That’s not environmentalism. That’s performance art.
You want better recycling? Invest in smarter systems. Make food waste collection painless. Reward the people doing it right. Don’t punish everyone else with stickers and form-filling.
This policy doesn’t solve the problem. It just offloads it onto the people who can’t push back.