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Caerphilly County Borough Council has secured a nearly £500,000 deal with Wastesavers to run its trade waste recycling service.

Since April, new rules in Wales have required businesses to separate their recyclable materials for collection.

Traders are free to negotiate their own recycling arrangements with a private firm, or can request collections from the council – which in the spring said it had a limited ability to deal with the extra volume of waste.

The council has since announced it has signed a partnership with Wastesavers, a Newport-based operator which already runs the Penallta Reuse Shop.

Contract details published on the council’s website show the deal is worth £477,000 and will run until the end of June 2027, with the potential for a two-year extension.

Cllr Chris Morgan, the cabinet member for waste, said the deal “means we are able to offer commercial waste customers a combination of the bespoke service Wastesavers can offer, whilst continuing to provide a dependable and trustworthy service that the council is renowned for”.

Wastesavers began as a Friends of the Earth organisation “focused on reducing waste and positive environmental action”, the organisation’s chief told councillors in Newport at a recent meeting there.

It then developed its services, offering reused furniture and paper recycling before becoming a fully-fledged waste collection operator via its trading arm.

The reuse shop in Penallta is one of several Wastesavers runs across South Wales, including other stores in Blaenau Gwent, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and Torfaen.

The Penallta shop opened in October 2022 and recently celebrated its second “birthday”, with the council announcing that it had “saved 179,248 items from landfills”.

Cllr Morgan said the reuse shop had “helped avoid unnecessary waste in our community, bringing us one step closer to becoming a carbon neutral authority and providing social and economic benefits to the wider community”.