Newport council, along with the rest of the Welsh councils has been set targets by the Welsh Assembly to recycle 25% of their waste by 2007 and 40% by 2010. In 2004/05 Newport already hit its 2007 target and it has been helped by a host of new schemes over the last year.
” Services have seen a lot of heavy investment over recent years and we are going to improve them further over the next few years “
– Ron Jones, Newport council
Newport city council, along with community recyclers Newport Wastesavers, has rolled out two new box collections, added 20,000 people to the garden waste collection scheme, began a fortnightly waste collection pilot scheme and revamped the city's civic amenity site, this year.
Ron Jones, Newport's cabinet member for transport and sustainable development, said; “A 25% recycling rate is a much better landmark for Newport than a rubbish mountain so we would like to say thank you to everyone who is now recycling or composting most weeks.”
2xrecycling
The council's alternate weekly recycling pilot, which the council has named “2xrecycling”, has been championed by the council as its best scheme yet. The 9,000 households on the pilot scheme have so far registered a 40% recycling rate. The council is hoping to eventually take the scheme city wide as it strives to hit 2010 targets.
“Services have seen a lot of heavy investment over recent years and we are going to improve them further over the next few years. In return we want more people to use them as we need 80% of people to recycle 75% of their rubbish most weeks if we are to reach the 40% rate by 2010,” Mr Jones explained.
Competitions
To celebrate the early achievement of the target the council and Wastesavers are running a week of competitions based around the “25” theme. Newport residents can write their details on five different recyclable materials in the week of the bank holiday and the following Tuesday the council will draw out 25 items from across the city. Residents whose details are drawn out will win prizes, with a bicycle and store vouchers on offer.
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Other competitions to be run on Bank Holiday Monday include a free home composter for the 25th visitor at the city's CA site, a free tree to plant for the first street with over 25 garden waste bins out for collection and a competition for schools to create lists of 25 reasons to recycle.
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