Cardiff Council unveils bright new bins as Cardiff works to reduce litter throughout its high streets, parks and residential areas, as part of ‘Cardiff’s Binning’.
Residents in Cardiff are set to benefit from new colourful bin designs. The campaign can be found in Grangetown, Riverside, Butetown, Splott, Adamsdown, Canton, Cathays and Plasnewydd. Following our successful bid for funding through the Neat Streets grant, Cardiff has received £10,000 from McDonald’s¹ and support from Hubbub to upgrade over 100 existing bins with new eye-catching designs, and install cigarette ballot bins, aimed at reducing cigarette butt litter.
The new bin designs feature playful takes on song lyrics from Welsh music legends, gaming motifs and litter related puns, encouraging passers-by to bin their rubbish.
The Cardiff’s binning campaign is welcomed, after research from Keep Wales Tidy has found that Wales is facing an escalating litter crisis that threatens our communities, our natural environment and our future prosperity.
Street litter surveys across Wales revealed a staggering 286% increase in the number of ‘D’-graded streets—those with completely unacceptable cleanliness—marking one of the worst results in 17 years of monitoring².
It continues to be a growing, nationwide issue, despite research from Hubbub revealing that 62% of people feel angry when they see litter on the ground. Two in five people find it frustrating that there aren’t more bins or campaigns to tackle litter³.
Litter costs the Council a significant amount of money each year – with a £7m street cleansing budget in place to clean and clear the streets of Cardiff.
It’s hoped that the ‘Cardiff’s binning’ campaign, will help with the aim to reduce litter in Cardiff’s communities.
Councillor Norma Mackie, Cabinet Member for Waste, Street Scene and Environmental Services at Cardiff Council said: “Dropping litter on the floor is completely unnecessary, it costs the taxpayer a significant amount of money each year – money that could be spent on other vital public services. The refresh of the litter bins in these wards is a good way to draw attention to them, so hopefully people will use them and help to keep the city’s streets clean and tidy.
“I would also like to thank all the community groups that work with our staff to carry out voluntary litter picks in wards across the city as part of the Love Where You Live campaign. The scheme has been designed so that communities can come together to improve community spirit, with a common goal to keep our streets clean and tidy.”
Gavin Ellis, Director and Co-founder at Hubbub said: “We have a wealth of experience in tackling specific types of litter in targeted environments and are delighted to share our learnings from Bristol’s Binning with Cardiff to develop litter-busting initiatives for their local area.”
Local McDonald’s Franchisee, Ralph Parker, who owns and operates seven McDonald’s restaurants across Cardiff, said: “We’re excited to be part of a project that brings Cardiff’s communities and local councils together to make a real difference. As a business committed to being a good neighbour, it’s fantastic to see local voices being listened to and turned into meaningful action that benefits the wider area. By making bins more eye-catching and engaging, we hope to encourage people to take care of Cardiff and the places they call home.”
The Neat Streets grant fund is supported by McDonald’s, who has funded projects with Hubbub since 2018. McDonald’s is tackling litter in local communities, both by litter picking and reducing the amount of waste its restaurants produce. The brand has been working to make recycling easier over the past four years too, and since 2015, has installed over 1,100 new recycling units, meaning it’s easier to separate plastics and cups for recycling in 85% of its restaurants. McDonald’s also collects used oil from its kitchens and turns this into enough biodiesel to fuel more than half of its delivery fleet.
For more information on how to address litter in your local area, visit neatstreets.org.uk or Homepage – Keep Cardiff Tidy
Notes
¹ Five grants of £10,000 were available for councils to apply, with councils required to contribute £5,000 themselves towards the project
² Source: Cardiff – 2024 – Keep Wales Tidy
³ Polling conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Hubbub between 27.03.2024 – 03.04.2024. National representative survey sample of 3,000 respondents.
About Hubbub
Hubbub is an environmental charity. They are all about inspiring action that’s good for the environment and for everyone.
They do this by creating campaigns that focus on topics people care about that also have a big impact, like the food we eat, clothes we wear, green spaces, and how we support our communities. We raise awareness and share actions you can do at home, at work or in your community. Actions that are simple, often fun, and always worth it.
Since 2014, Hubbub has delivered more than 154 trailblazing environmental campaigns in collaboration with over 2,500 partners, helping to shift the national debate on key environmental issues such as food waste, sustainable fashion, reuse and sustainable diets. Hubbub’s campaigns include #InTheLoop which initially brought together 25 of the UK’s largest companies to boost recycling on the high street and through a replicable toolkit has now expanded across seven cities, a 3-year partnership with IKEA to create the world’s largest consumer-facing sustainability campaign ‘Live LAGOM’ and creating a network of over 450 (and counting) Community Fridges across the UK which, in 2022, shared 16.9 million meals worth of surplus food over 1.2 million visits.
https://www.hubbub.org.uk/
Instagram: @helloHubbub
LinkedIn: Hubbub-UK
Facebook: @HubbubUK
About McDonald’s
McDonald’s has been operating in the UK since 1974. The business currently operates more than 1,560 restaurants across the UK and Ireland, serving over three million customers each day. McDonald’s is one of the UK’s largest private sector employers, employing more than 159,000 people and works with over 29,000 British and Irish farmers.
You can follow all the latest McDonald’s UK news on Instagram @mcdonaldsukinews
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