Wheelie bins will be collected in Edinburgh every fortnight instead of every week from September as a measure to encourage Edinburgh residents to separate their "waste" before it goes out on the kerbside and recycle more.
Green domestic waste bins and brown garden waste bins will be picked up on the same day on alternate weeks. Food waste bins will continue to be picked up weekly.
Currently, each household sends half a tonne of rubbish to landfill each year and Edinburgh as a whole recycles around a third of its waste.
Food waste makes up around a third of rubbish in an average bin, so it is anticipated that residents who use the Council's food recycling scheme will produce less domestic waste.
"With a large choice of recycling options available, including food waste recycling, we hope that this will reduce the need for affected households - about 50% of the city - to have waste collected for landfill each week," said Environment Convener Councillor Lesley Hinds.
"These changes will help to reduce the 148,000 tonnes of rubbish we dump at landfill each year, and to raise recycling rates from the current 33.5% to 50% by 2014."
Similar services to this throughout the UK have shown that food and general waste can be hygienically stored in bins with closed lids. Research funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) supports this.
The service will be introduced city-wide next year.