Newport’s fortnightly pilot boosts recycling rate by 42%

The city’s current waste and recycling service, which covers all 58,000 households across Newport, excluding flats, provides a weekly recycling and residual waste collection.

However, since the beginning of October, 9,000 of the residents have been switched to a fortnightly residual waste collection for a six month trial. The residents are now receiving a green waste and dry recyclables collection one week and a residual and dry recyclables collection the following week.

Record

Over 2,000 extra recycling containers were requested by residents on the pilot scheme prior to the start of the new system. And a record number of recycling boxes – green boxes for metals, plastic and glass and blue for paper and textiles – has been collected in the first few weeks of the trial.

Newport Wastesavers, a community-based group who collect waste and recyclables in the city, was collecting around 34 tonnes of dry recyclables a week prior to the pilot, but now it is collecting over 48 tonnes a week.

Green waste, of which the city collected over 17 tonnes between April and September this year, has not yet been counted for the trial scheme. This is because of the low tonnages which come in at this time of year when less people are gardening.

Support

Wastesavers has surveyed everyone on the pilot scheme and found that 62% of respondents are currently in favour of the new service. Mike Croxford, Wastesavers general manager said: “I’ve been hugely impressed by the amount of recycling people on the pilot now putting out for us to collect. This is evidence that more people are making the right choice about things they would normally throw away.”

Recycling and refuse officers have been visiting streets on the scheme checking people are recycling as much as they can, and that they are putting their bin out on the correct week. On the first week, the council said around 10% of bins were put out on the wrong week even though residents had been informed and had stickers on their bin detailing collection weeks.

The council is currently stickering those bins again to say why they were not collected. A spokesman for the council said at the moment, collection crews were putting the extra sacks that have been put out on the residual waste collection week, back into the resident’s bin.

However, he said that the council would consider more serious action if residents persisted in either putting bins out on the wrong week or putting extra residual sacks out on residual waste collection week.

Ron Jones, Newport’s cabinet member for Transport and Sustainable Development said: “We’ve done all we can to help people adapt to this scheme but there are a minority that mistake this as just a ‘heaper’ service.”

Newport currently has a recycling rate of 20% for 2003/04 and is hoping to increase this to 25% by 2004/05. The Welsh Assembly Government has a target of 40% recycling by 2010.