Household rubbish powering up to 10,000 homes as Wales targets zero-waste nation by 2050

A facility in Carmarthen is going one step further to ensure Wales reaches its goal of becoming a zero-waste nation by 2050.

Over 24,000 tonnes of rubbish a year is collected by Carmarthen council, with the black bag waste being sent to the Carmarthen Waste Management (CWM) facility.

Any recyclables get extracted before the waste goes through the shredder and then turned into fuel which goes on to power up to 10 thousand homes in Wales.

Black bags are typically sent to landfill where they can take up to 500 years to decompose.

Black bag waste from homes in Carmarthenshire are brought to the CWM facility.

However, at the Carmarthenshire hub, up to 10 tonnes a week are reused and transformed into new materials.

The site is also run on green energy as the pipes collect methane gases from the rubbish, converting them into electricity to power the facility.

A CWM representative explained: "Over 25 thousand tonnes of garden waste gets brought here and it slowly and naturally decomposes, it then gets placed through a shredder, the smaller bits taken out and tuned into compost which is sold. The money from which goes back into ecology projects here on this site."

In 2022, they launched 'Canolfan ETO' which is a facility to repurpose, repair and up-cycle items that would typically be left to decay on a landfill site.

The workshop receives donated items from recycling centres and repairs and upcycles them for resale at the site's shops.

Dan Taylor-Peter works at Canolfan Eto and explained how items, which are donated to the workshop from recycling centres, are brought to the workshop where a technician can help repair and restore them.

"(After being) refurbished it'll go on to be re-sold in canolfan Eto which is on site." Dan said.

He continued: "All the money that's been raised from these projects goes back in circular economy and reuse projects we are doing."

One of the shop's customers said they enjoy visiting because "It's one of the places you never know what you're going to find."

Wales is currently the third best country in the world for recycling and has a recycling rate of 65%.

In 2019, the Welsh Government unveiled its Beyond Recycling strategy, which proposes banning waste being sent to landfill or incinerators, as well as ending single-use products.

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