Maidstone Council Cabinet Member for Environment, Tony Harwood, will be helping to roll out the borough's new fortnightly recycling service.

The first 20,000 homes will have the new service by the end of this month. Another 20,000 will receive it in October and everyone will have an improved fortnightly recycling collection of - paper, cardboard, plastics, tins and cans - by February 2009. Everyone will also keep a weekly rubbish collection.

Leader of the council, Fran Wilson said: "Our new service gives residents the recycling services that they have demanded and keeps the weekly rubbish collection that they need."

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Most households will be getting a new 190 litre grey bin for their weekly rubbish collection. Residents will be asked to use their existing green bins for their fortnightly recycling collections. Special arrangements will be made for people who don’t have wheelie bins or space for a second bin.

Separate kerbside glass collections will continue, for the time being, for the 14,000 or so households that currently receive the service. But the service won't make sense environmentally or economically when the Allington waste to energy plant is back up and running because then any glass put in household rubbish will be recycled after it is incinerated. It will be burnt and collected for use as aggregate in road construction.

Wilson explained: "It really won’t make sense to collect mixed glass from the kerbside when the incinerator is working but if residents take their glass to bottle banks and sort it by colour it will recycled into new glass bottles and jars."

Garden waste will continue to be collected fortnightly in the same containers as usual.

(CD/JM)