The levels of recycling in the city is increasing

The city was given a target to recycle a quarter of household waste by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) and reached that target two years early.

Nearly 19,000 tonnes of waste was recycled last year - equivalent in weight to nearly 1,600 school buses.

However 56,000 tonnes of rubbish was still sent to landfill sites.

This is equivalent to one tonne of rubbish from every household being send for burial at the landfill sites each year.

But this figure is down on the previous year where 60,000 tonnes of rubbish was sent to landfill.

Targets have been set to reduce the amount being sent to landfill

Newport Council has introduced a number of schemes to encourage people to recycle including a pilot where non-recyclable rubbish collections was reduced to once a fortnight.

Statistics show that this scheme has been the most effective at encouraging recycling with 40% increase on the recycling rate.

Targets to get 80% of the city's residents to recycle three quarters of their rubbish have now been set and it is hoped that the recycle rate will hit the 40% mark by 2010.

And in other parts of south Wales, the rate of recycling appears to be on the increase.

Figures from the Vale of Glamorgan indicate that it is on its way to hitting the 25% recycling rate set by the WAG by 2006/2007 with the recycling rate for the county currently standing at 23%.

Waste

No figures are available for Cardiff's current recycling rate but the city hit its 15% target for 2003/2004 and a new facility planned to deal with recycling is in the process of being constructed.

The city's new recycling centre is expected to be ready by March 2006 and is anticipated to sort through the waste at a fast rate - the amount currently processed in a day will take just an hour with the new machine.

And in Bridgend, �3.9m funding from the WAG will be used to extend a kerb-side recycling scheme which currently has 36,000 properties taking part.

The council said it was well on the way to hitting the 25% recycling target.