Bright Blue Bags will begin appearing on doorsteps in Shepton Mallet from Monday (October 12) as the roll-out of a new recycling scheme moves ever closer.

The Somerset Waste Partnership (SWP) is preparing to launch Recycle More, which will see more items recycled weekly at the kerbside and refuse collections moving from fortnightly to once every three weeks.

Mendip will be the first part of Somerset to operate under the new system, with the first collections happening for more than 51,000 households from October 26.

Ahead of these first collections, the SWP is delivering new blue bags to all Mendip residents to hold the additional items that will collected.

The new bags are base-weighted (to prevent them from blowing away in the wind), have a Velcro-fastened lid to secure their contents, are waterproof and are easy to fold down and store when not being used.

In addition to the blue bags, residents will be provided with leaflets stickers for their existing recycling boxes to remind them which items go into which receptacle once the Recycle More collections officially begin.

The breakdown of items for each box or bag will be as follows:

Bright blue bag – plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, tins and cans, empty aerosols and foil

Black box – paper and card

Carrier bags – small household batteries, small electrical items (crews will return these bags)

In light of extra materials being collected at the kerbside, the refuse collected will move from once every two weeks to once every three weeks.

The SWP said Recycle More would help to protect the environment and save taxpayers' money by having less rubbish being sent to landfill.

Managing director Mickey Green said: "We know from our trials and experiences elsewhere that the bright blue bags will work really well, and we're sure that people are going to be really happy with them.

"Lots of people are excited by the new service, but we'd ask them to stay patient and carry on recycling as they are now until their first collection date."

Until the new collections begin in Mendip on October 26, any of the items which cannot currently be recycled can be taken to the district's three recycling centres in Frome, Street and Wells.

A total of 51,768 households in Mendip will benefit in the first phase of the Recycle More roll-out, including those in Frome, Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet, Street, Wells and the neighbouring villages.