Council's rubbish shake-up

At the same time it will increase its recycling collections from once a fortnight to a weekly service.

Adur District Council hopes this will encourage people to think more about what can be recycled instead of automatically throwing everything in the dustbin.

The council, which covers Lancing, Shoreham and Southwick, already runs a blue box recycling service where recycled items are collected from homes once every two weeks.

It plans to run the new collection scheme for a ten-week trial period in an area covering 500 homes.

It will begin in early autumn and will be closely monitored to ensure ordinary domestic waste does not build up.

Strict new Government recycling targets mean the council must increase the amount it recycles from 17 per cent, which it currently deals with, to 33 per cent by 2004 and 36 per cent by 2006.

The amount of waste produced by Adur residents increased by about 12.5 per cent last year.

Although Adur recycles more than the national average of eight per cent, it is still a long way off the European average of 45 per cent.

Adur's recycling officer, Gill Moss, is concerned that, if immediate action is not taken, the problem will be out of control within a few years.

She said: "This trial is in response to a huge crisis that is developing in Adur because we are not recycling enough of our waste.

"At the moment all of our waste is buried in landfill sites in West Sussex. These will fill up within eight years.

"There are only a few practical alternatives to landfill such as incineration.

"So the only option is to reduce our waste by recycling and composting more.

"Something that would make an immediate impact is if residents used the mini- recycling centres properly.

"Some residents are contaminating the sites by putting plate glass in with bottle glass and cardboard in with newspapers and magazines.

"If this happens then it is too costly to sort it out. The whole load cannot be recycled and is taken away to landfill."