Carbon Impacts Reports

The report examines the carbon impacts of different recycling services used by local authorities in Wales, and compares the performance of kerbside sort, co-mingled and two stream systems.  It also considers the climate change benefits of recycling activities in 2014-2015 and compares this to the benefits that would be seen if the Welsh Government's Collections Blueprint were to be adopted by every local authority.

Addendum to Climate Change Impacts of Recycling Services in Wales (2016): Carbon Impacts – Traffic Congestion during Collection (2017)

This addendum considers the carbon dioxide equivalent impact associated with emissions from vehicles idling as a result of operating kerbside sort collection vehicles.

The analysis determined that approximately nine tonnes of CO2e emissions results from vehicles idling behind kerbside sort collection vehicles per 10,000 tonnes of collected dry recycling.  The quantity of CO2e emissions from idling vehicles is so small it has negligible impact on the significant CO2e performance gap between kerbside sort and the other collection systems.