EVERY household in one Blaenau Gwent has had their black bin bag waste inspected upon by council officials during the last eight years – it has been revealed.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Economic Development and Environment Management scrutiny committee on Tuesday, October 21 councillors received an annual report on the authority’s Waste and Recycling performance for 2024/2025 which showed while the recycling rate went up from 66.18 per cent for 2023/2024 to 68.89 per cent in 2024/2025 it still fell short of the 70 per cent target recycling rate.

Councillors heard from Andrew Long, who manages of the council’s frontline enforcement services that wardens were proactive in offering help using the ‘keeping up with the Jones’ campaign’ which targets the residents who don’t recycle at all or who recycle very little.

Mr Long said: “Over the last six to eight years every property in the county borough has had an enforcement visit so that’s over 32,000 homes.

“The work involves taking a black bag out of someone’s presented residual waste, photograph and log it and take it to the Silent Valley HWRC (Household Waste and Recycling Centre) and examine it for any recyclable material it might contain.

“If people are identified as putting out recyclate in their residual waste then we take an enforcement process which involves serving a legal notice and a £100 FPN (fixed penalty notice) and prosecution if that isn’t paid.”

Mr Long said: “There’s a large body of work that the guys do proactively in addition to the crews notifying us where waste is being presented on collection days and we will subsequently monitor those addresses if there’s repeat offending.

“We’re very proactive when it comes to targeting non-compliant properties.”

The committee approved the report.