Putting the bins out is rarely a welcome chore, but residents in Denbighshire face an especially complicated task as they try to divide their rubbish between as many as 12 separate containers.
Denbighshire County Council has begun a three-month trial involving around 4,500 households to test kerbside recycling for soft plastics, including crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and the plastic film covering ready meals.
The trial comes after a controversial £22 million overhaul of the county’s recycling system in 2024, which already requires residents to separate their waste into as many as 11 different containers.
Adding soft plastics to the scheme brings the total to 12, leading critics to accuse the council of turning householders into “unpaid binmen”.
Across Wales, councils are asking households to sort an increasing number of materials as devolved ministers prepare to introduce kerbside soft-plastic recycling next year, despite concerns about whether the system can work in practice.
In England, the planned start of soft-plastic collections has been delayed from 2027 until 2030 after councils warned they would not be ready. A three-year FlexCollect trial also concluded that the UK lacks enough recycling capacity to process all the material collected.
Denbighshire council bosses insist no decision has been taken on making the latest scheme permanent. However, residents say the existing recycling arrangements are already difficult enough.
“The number of bins we have is absolutely ridiculous,” Denbighshire resident John Jacob said.
Denbighshire households are being asked to recycle plastic bags at home after already being required to separate their rubbish into a collection of tubs, boxes and bags
“And if you look at the flats, there is nowhere to store all the bins, so they end up stacked outside. It makes the streets look awful. All you can see is bins.”
For the past two years, residents have been responsible for sorting their own rubbish into a procession of containers. The change followed the removal of the single recycling bin, whose contents had previously been separated by the council.
Households must now divide paper, metal, plastic and glass between colour-coded, stackable boxes called Trolibocs, with a pink box available for batteries. Small electrical items can be placed on top for collection.
Food scraps are placed in a small silver kitchen caddy before being transferred to a larger orange container outside the property.
Cardboard has become another major source of frustration. It must be packed into a woven blue sack that residents say deteriorates within months. One local described it on social media as “a chocolate teapot”.
Once the sack falls apart, as residents say it inevitably does, a replacement costs £12.50 and can take up to four weeks to arrive. The council says it is reviewing the arrangement.
Residents can also request black and purple caddies for sanitary products such as nappies and incontinence pads. A garden waste collection costs between £47 and £77 a year, while clothing is collected on the council’s behalf by an outside organisation.
Households that do not follow the system face further pressure, with general waste wheelie bins now collected only once every four weeks rather than fortnightly.
Denbighshire resident Linda Muraca wrote on social media: “Putting the bins out has become a full-time job, especially during the fourth week when they all have to go out.
“You should see the condition of our roads after the refuse collectors have been. Rubbish is often scattered everywhere.”
The council’s latest recycling push follows a troubled initial rollout. Missed collections forced officials to spend millions on additional vehicles and staff as they tried to get the system operating properly.
The Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition that oversaw its rollout collapsed in September and the authority is now run by an independent with support from the Conservatives.
But Labour councillors are nevertheless sticking to their environmental guns after rolling out the rehash two years ago: one described those who refused to do their part as ‘lazy, lazy, lazy’.
They said: ‘They are lazy and they cannot be bothered. They probably don’t want to look after the environment and the climate change and blah, blah, blah, alright? They are not thinking about their children, they are not thinking about the place they live in.
‘I mean, good grief, we had a huge hot summer this year and that’s all to do with climate change, running out of water and whatever. All these things are contributing to the climate change. That is why we need to be recycling far more.’
The unnamed councillor added that they ‘recycle everything’, telling The Times: ‘We want to reduce (waste) and the Welsh government wants to reduce it. Denbighshire has been leading the way.’
Three of the bins Denbighshire residents have to contend with: the silver caddy and orange caddy are for food waste, while the blue general waste bin is collected once every four weeks
Fly-tipping in Denbighshire is at its highest level in 15 years: according to official statistics, the number of reported incidents rose 230 per cent between 2024 and 2025, from 1,121 to 3,699.
The council says this is because it changed to a new reporting system that allows it to record more incidents. But reports also rose 46 per cent between 2023 and 2024 before the new system was introduced.
It insists there is ‘no evidence of a causal link’ between the expanding number of ways people sort rubbish and incidences of fly-tipping.
But while Welsh ministers push locals into ever-more-elaborate ways of sorting their rubbish, the postcode lottery of bin collections finally came to an end in England earlier this year with the introduction of ‘common-sense’ rules on bins.
Residents of English councils now need only sort rubbish into four containers: general waste; food waste; paper and card; and glass, metal and plastic.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, a frequent critic of bin bonanzas, has called on Denbighshire county council, and Wales at large, to follow suit in simplifying bin day.
Grassroots development manager Benjamin Elks said: ‘Welsh households are sick to the back teeth of being treated like unpaid binmen by overzealous council bosses.
‘The ongoing fiasco in Denbighshire exposes the sheer madness of an over-complicated, multi-bin regime that leaves residents wading through sorting nightmares while local services grind to a halt.
‘Welsh ministers must scrap this administrative circus, and bring in the simpler collection rules being rolled out across England to give long-suffering Welsh taxpayers their sanity back.’
A Denbighshire County Council spokesperson told Our News Outlet the soft plastics trial had been met with a ‘positive response’ and ‘good uptake’, with 2,700 bags collected from the 4,500 homes in the first week of the trial.
Most residents, they said, put out ‘three containers a week’ for recycling – the three-part Trolibocs as well as their food caddy and cardboard bag – while stressing that the hygiene, garden and clothes bins are optional.
The spokesperson added: ‘Denbighshire is proud to be working alongside residents to achieve some of the highest recycling rates in the UK.
‘The soft plastics trial builds on the established recycling service and is helping the council prepare for forthcoming Welsh Government changes to recycling requirements that will apply to all local authorities in Wales.
‘We recognise that any change to collection services can take time to adapt to, and we will continue to work with residents to ensure the service remains effective, practical and easy to use.’
