SOUTH Gloucestershire Council is to reintroduce recycling bags for kerbside collections, six years after scrapping them.
Residents will be able to choose whether to switch to the new bags for plastics, cans and foil, or keep putting them in their green boxes.
A report to the council’s scrutiny commission in October said the 2019 decision to stop providing bags was “unpopular with many residents”.
But opposition Conservatives said bringing bags back was a “retrograde step”.
Currently households are given boxes to separate recycling into, but they aren’t supplied with lids, so on windy days plastics and other recycling is blown across the streets.
The new bags are likely to be delivered when the council begins collecting soft plastics from all households next year.
They can be sealed at the top and are weighted, to stop them blowing away when empty.
Previously residents were given three bags – for paper, cardboard, and cans together with plastics – plus a box for glass. In 2019, the council stopped supplying bags and told people to use boxes.
Boxes are easier and safer for binmen to empty, the report said, but many residents don’t correctly separate their recycling. If the wrong items are mixed, the council receives less money when they are recycled and collections take longer, as crews try to pick items out from the wrong boxes.
The report said it will not be “mandatory” to switch to bags.
It also noted that the previous bags deteriorated or blew away, and needed to be replaced every year or so.
By Alex Seabrook and Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service