Residents are being asked to get behind St Albans District Council’s drive to help boost household recycling rates, save money and reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, January 21 council will hear the initial results of rolling out a new recycling scheme across the city. Overall it appears that residents seem to be engaging well and in the last two weeks of December, 2,250 additional recycling boxes were ordered by residents.

The roll-out shows that some people are still unclear about what type of waste goes where and in particular, cardboard.

Residents are being encouraged to remove cardboard from the green waste and put it in their recycling box with their paper.

National standards for compost have tightened recently. The council is therefore asking people to remove cardboard from their green waste because it is contaminating the quality of the compost, making it unusable.

If the composting plant rejects the green waste because it is contaminated with cardboard, it has to be sent to landfill. This is harmful to the environment and every tonne costs £90 in landfill tax. In the year ending September 2013, 3,328 tonnes of green waste were rejected and sent to landfill at a cost to taxpayers of almost £300,000.

To book a free oversized cardboard collection contact 01727 819285 or email wastemanagementservices@stalbans.gov.uk.

Residents are reminded that they can request extra recycling boxes if they need them.