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Over the next few weeks, a new reuseable recycling bag will be delivered to 6,000 properties across the area to help make it easier to sort.
Full instructions will be included in a leaflet inside the bag and households can start using it straight away in addition to their existing recycling boxes.
Trial households will each receive one weighted bag for their plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, and metal packaging such as tins, cans, foil and aerosols.
The bag is to be used alongside existing boxes to provide extra capacity.
Households selected for the trial are in:
- Failand
- Leigh Woods
- Long Ashton
- Portishead
- Haywood Village, Weston Village and West Wick in Weston-super-Mare.
See specific roads on our website.
Many other councils, including Somerset, already use similar recycling bags and have found they provide a good solution for the storage and collection of recycling, as well as reducing litter.
The bags are:
- larger than the current recycling boxes (75 litres compared to 55 litres)
- weighted with rubberised bottoms so they don’t blow away easily
- sealable, meaning the lighter plastic recycling doesn’t blow away
- reusable and cheaper to replace if they’re damaged or lost.
Better sorted recycling is higher quality and worth more money, which helps cover the cost of collections and generates an income to help pay for other vital council services.
The trial will also investigate if the new bags help speed up collection times for crews, which would provide a more reliable service and reduce congestion on busy roads.
Paper and cardboard can continue to be recycled in one recycling box, glass in the other, and food waste in the brown container.
If the trial is successful, the bag will be rolled out to all North Somerset households at the same time as the council introduces three-weekly black bin collections in 2025.
Check your Christmas recycling dates
New recycling and waste calendars are now available on our website so find out when to put your boxes and bins out over the coming months.
These new calendars for recycling, garden waste and general waste collections can now be downloaded to help you keep on track over the winter.
Some collection days change over the festive period to allow for bank holidays so please check yours carefully.
Garden waste collections also become monthly during December, January and February, and there is a six-week break over the Christmas period so crews can help with the increased recycling and waste.