Best ever year for Get It Out For Cardiff!

Get It Out for Cardiff (GIOFC), the recycling and re-use campaign aimed at students has just concluded its 2013 campaign and enjoyed its best year yet.

The recycling rates have shot up by 14% with a 28% reduction in complaints recorded in the Roath and Plasnewydd areas over the academic year as our new approach to dealing with waste issues here have been implemented.

Donations are being stored
over the Summer

Cllr Ashley Govier, Cabinet Member for Environment was delighted with this year’s success. He said, ‘We have taken the GIOFC concept and introduced key changes as well as changing the general way we deal with waste and litter in the student accommodation areas and the results are there for all to see. We removed the additional weekend collections at the end of term and with our newly installed specialist Roath and Plasnewydd education and enforcement team, promoted best use of the available services such as the weekly kerbside recycling, fortnightly general waste collections and our household waste and recycling centre at Wedal Road.



‘We also promoted the year-round re-use banks provided by our partner, YMCA including the 3 additional banks for GIOFC 2013 and the 18 green sites across the university sites where a huge variety of items including clothing, food, small electrical items, books, CD’s, DVD’s and kitchen items were donated with the food collected re-distributed by Fareshare Cymru to relieve food poverty in our communities.’ 



Donations collected at a Green Zone one week

The total additional waste collected over the GIOFC period was down by 32%, as more people used the regular recycling and waste services correctly, underlining again how the recycling message was hitting home with the new approach meaning fines only had to be issued where necessary. A total of 22 fines were issued this year where our efforts at education and support had been ignored.



Environmental Champions spreading the message
in the student areas!

Cllr Govier added, ‘We cannot afford to rest on our laurels and we will build on this great year. The team has worked tirelessly to improve this historically difficult area to keep clean and I’m so pleased their efforts have been rewarded with such an improvement in recycling rates and reduction in complaints. We also achieved a saving of £26k in the process which just shows what can be achieved by looking again and implementing new and innovative approaches to how we deal an issue that can otherwise detrimentally affect the quality of life for too many people in these communities.’