New recycling rules to be introduced by the Welsh government next month will quadruple waste costs for care homes, campaigners have said.

The new rules will come into force on April 6 and will require all businesses as well as charities and public sector organisations to sort their waste for recycling on site – although the NHS has a two-year exemption.

Georgie Llewelyn, whose family have run the Penpergwm House Residential Care Home, near Abergavenny, for over 30 years, said they could face bills of over £1,000 a month thanks to the Welsh government’s new policy.

Llewelyn said: “Up until now we have been using a very good company, Thomas Waste Management, who have been collecting all our recyclable material and separating it at their site but they’ve written to us and told us they will no longer be able to do that and in future will only collect the black sacks of mixed residual waste.

“We have been paying them £250 a month to collect from our two 1,100-litre bins with clinical waste collected separately by a specialist company and at the same time we’ve been incinerating our paper and cardboard.

“I have had one quote which was for £150 a week plus VAT and that doesn’t cover the paper and cardboard which will also have to be collected. It’s going to cost us over £1,000 a month.”

Llewelyn has written to her local Senedd Member, Peter Fox, and to the four Regional Members and is being backed by Care Forum Wales, the body which represents over 500 independent care providers in Wales.

Their chair, Mario Kreft, said: “The NHS is being made a special case and will be given two years’ grace before starting to do this and fairness dictates the social care sector should undoubtedly be treated in the same way.

“As well as the extra financial burden, there is also going to be a heavy cost in terms of staff time and it will impact care homes in the same way as it does hospitals

“All of this comes at a time when care homes are struggling with other unnecessary changes after the pandemic on top of suffering the effects of chronic underfunding by councils and health boards for decades.

“The sector has suffered enough – it’s on its knees. This is not a kind or intelligent thing to do.”

A Welsh government spokesperson said: “We are introducing this legislation to improve the consistency of how we manage waste in Wales, reduce the amount of waste we send to incineration and landfill, and improve the quality and quantity of recyclable materials we collect from workplaces so we can return these valuable materials to the Welsh economy.

“The new law will require workplaces to separate key recyclable materials the way households already do across most of Wales. Thanks to a ‘Team Wales’ effort, our high rate of household recycling saves us around 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. The regulations will help ensure that workplaces can now also play their part in addressing the climate and nature emergency, and be able to benefit from potential savings, by becoming more resource efficient.”