Petition launched demanding for recycling centre in Llangollen

The Leader reported in June how controversy sparked as Llangollen residents were banned by Wrexham Council to use the Plas Madoc recycling centre due to Covid restrictions.

Llangollen residents had been using the plant since 2007 after their town's recycling centre closed down - with the next available one in Denbighshire nearly 15 miles away in Ruthin.

With Plas Madoc being just five miles away from Llangollen, it had been a convenient alternative.

But now unable to use the site, Llangollen residents are calling on Denbighshire County Council (DCC) to provide the town with a recycling centre.

One resident, Phil Jones, has launched a petition which has already attracted nearly 500 signatures.

He said: "We call upon Denbighshire County Council to re-establish a proper recycling service in the Dee Valley as a matter of urgency. To negotiate access to the Plas Madoc recycling site (in Wrexham County Borough) for Denbighshire residents, and to provide a free waste collection service for bulky items for residents of the LL20 post code until such time as an agreement is reached with Wrexham County Borough Council."

There is a pop-up recycling scheme which runs on a Saturday morning at Llangollen pavilion and sees bin wagons park up there to collect people's waste - which had been suspended due to Covid but is now back up and running.

But for some Llangollen residents, this isn't enough.

Mr Jones said while Llangollen and Dee Valley residents have accessiblity to just four hours per month of recycling tips, other Denbighshire residents have up to 250 hours monthly access.

He said: "We live in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty but DCC is jeopardising that by making people travel nearly 15 miles to get rid of rubbish.

"Why does fly-tipping happen? Well, one reason is that some people value their own convenience over and above the environment and the countryside in which they live.

"When all convenience is effectively removed from our ability to recycle, then more people will choose the easy option and throw their rubbish over the nearest convenient embankment."

Mr Jones said he had written to the chief executive of DCC and had been assured that the authority would be "more than willing" to collaborate with Wrexham Council to negotiate cross-border arrangements for such things as access to recycling sites.

However, Mr Jones says he has heard nothing since from the council.

DCC says it has no plans to open a recycling centre in Llangollen, but that it remains in talks with Wrexham Council over the shared use of its Plas Madoc site.

A spokesperson for the authority said: "We are aware of the petition regarding recycling in the Dee Valley, and we have responded to many emails about it during the past 12 months. We have communicated our intentions clearly to everyone who has made an enquiry, including the author of this petition.

“The council currently has no plans to build a new household waste recycling centre in the county. The proposed new facility in Denbigh is not a household waste recycling centre, and it would therefore not accept waste directly from residents. It is a central waste depot for the whole of Denbighshire, which is necessary to enable us to expand our kerbside recycling collections, and further improve recycling rates in the county.

"Discussions with Wrexham County Borough Council about the use of Plas Madoc remain on-going. Both councils have been working hard just to keep household waste collections going during this very difficult year. The global pandemic that we have had to deal with is still with us, and this has inevitably resulted in other pieces of work taking longer than they would otherwise have taken.

"The pop-up recycling facility operates on alternate Saturdays in Llangollen and Corwen. We have recently increased this free service to a total of 42 slots per site. Not all slots on the last few Saturdays were taken, which suggests that we are meeting local demand. Very few bulky items are brought, compared to green waste and residual waste, but provision is there for this."

The petition is available at https://www.change.org/p/denbighshire-county-council-return-of-recycling-in-llangollen-and-the-dee-valley