Monmouthshire County Council is launching a new recycling scheme aimed at separating the glass from the current Red & Purple recycling bags. In a trial area, residents will be supplied with a new green box in which to place their glass bottles and jars.
Rachel Jowitt, Head of Waste & Street Services, explains: “The recycling industry is changing and to recycle all the materials we currently collect it’s important for us to collect glass separately from the other materials. With our current system our recycling needs to be sorted into its separate types. Through the process glass can get too crushed and it’s then too small to recycle. By collecting it on its own it can go straight for recycling thereby allowing us to reprocess the glass more locally, and help us contain the cost of the overall service at this time of massive financial constraint.”
The trial area covers around 6,500 houses and includes parts of Abergavenny, Gilwern, Govilon, Llanellen, Goytre and Little Mill. Over a period of 6 months various vehicles and collection methods will be tested and residents consulted, to help establish the most suitable method to roll out across the rest of the county.
Cabinet Member for County Operations, Bryan Jones looks forward to the new service: “Our residents have told us that they like the current Red & Purple recycling bags so we want to stick with them whilst collecting the glass on its own. Monmouthshire’s recycling rate is already one of the highest in the UK and I’d like to thank our residents for helping us achieve that. But we hope this latest initiative will push us onto the next level as well as keeping the overall cost of our collection services down”.
Detailed information about the scheme, and the new boxes, will be delivered over the next few weeks with first collections due to take place on September 19th.
MCC