Newport City Council has announced that the first phase of its new three-weekly bin collection schedule will start from Monday 19 June.

The new schedule will see household rubbish bins and garden waste bins be collected once every three weeks. Currently these are collected once every two weeks.

Around 12,100 households across the city will move to three-weekly collections as part of the first phase. A mix of streets and a mix of households has been selected from across the city.

From this week and over the next two weeks, residents whose streets have been selected for the first phase will receive:

a letter informing them that the changes are about to start
a leaflet explaining what the changes mean and why they are being introduced
a calendar showing them their new collection dates for the next twelve months from June 2023

All other Newport residents will then receive information on the changes later in the year, before they come into effect.

The change has been brought in to help the council meet its recycling targets. Currently the council is recycling around 67 per cent of waste it collects. To meet Welsh government targets, this needs to increase to 70 per cent by 2024/25.

Failure to meet this target will see the council liable for fines. At the current recycling rate, the fine from April 2025 would be in excess of £500,000 per year.

All other waste services will remain unchanged. This means that recycling and food waste will continue to be collected weekly, and hygiene bags will be collected fortnightly.

Analysis of waste collected in Newport shows that almost 40 per cent of what is currently going into household rubbish bins can be recycled at the kerbside.

Many other councils in Wales and across the UK are either considering moving to a three or four weekly collection for rubbish bins or have already done so.

Councils which have already made the change have reported increased recycling rates as a result.