Monmouthshire’s recycling rates have grown from 41.3% last year to an expected 47% this year. This means that the amount of residual of ‘black bag’ waste is reducing and so Monmouthshire County Council are extending the number of households that will have black bag refuse collections fortnightly.
Dave Harris, Monmouthshire County Council’s Head of Waste, said:
“We’re very pleased that recycling is improving. Having continuing weekly food, green waste and dry recycling through the red and purple bag scheme means we can extend the areas having fortnightly collections of black bag waste.”
The next towns and villages to see the changes are Shirenewton, Devauden, Itton, Llanhennock, Tredunnock, Earlswood, Llanllowell, Coed Cwnwr, Star Hill (Llanishen), White Lye, Catbrook and Penallt. Residents in these areas will be given leaflets on how the scheme works from 24th January. Fortnightly waste collections will commence in February.
This only refers to residual waste and all collections of recycling (red and purple bag) and food and garden waste will continue to take place every week.
Mr Harris, continued:
“We’ll make sure that everyone has everything they need to get used to the changes. We are all recycling more and our residents helped us to beat the 40% recycling target for 2009/10. Our next recycling target is 52% by March 2013.
“We are creating less waste to go to landfill and now we only need to collect rubbish that isn’t recyclable on a fortnightly basis.
“Nappies and incontinence pads will continue to be collected weekly so the refuse bags contain only dry items like plastic bags and packaging and bags won’t smell.
“We have to increase our recycling rate and reduce the amount of waste that we send to landfill. If we don’t continue to improve then the authority will be fined and so we are working hard with our residents to get recycling as much as possible.
“Any money we save on collecting waste can be diverted to our recycling collections which increase as people recycle more.”
At the moment approximately 40% of the county is covered by fortnightly residual waste collections. The North of Monmouthshire is yet to be covered. The Monmouth area is due to have fortnightly collections rolled out in March & Abergavenny in June.
