HUNTINGDONSHIRE residents could soon be recycling more, as their district council discusses expanding the type of material collected for re-use. HDC is being tight-lipped about details of possible improvements to the recycling scheme because of potential

HUNTINGDONSHIRE residents could soon be recycling more, as their district council discusses expanding the type of material collected for re-use.

HDC is being tight-lipped about details of possible improvements to the recycling scheme because of potential staffing implications, but decisions are expected (in private session) at a meeting of the council's cabinet on January 21.

The obvious next step, which has been discussed by councillors and officers for some years, is kerbside collection of glass. What is not yet clear - but will have to form part of the calculations - is the extent to which collecting glass from people's homes will increase the quantity already recycled through bottle banks in public and supermarket car parks.

Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire are already among the very best areas in Britain for recycling waste, with between 55 and 65 per cent of material re-used, depending on how the calculation is made, but many other areas are catching up rapidly. All councils face increasing penalties for the amount of waste sent to landfill.

HDC is anxious not to impose additional cost on Council Tax payers, but for safety reasons it is hard to see how glass could safely be collected other than in containers used exclusively for the purpose.

But there are other materials that are not currently collected that could safely go into blue recycling bins, such as CDs, DVDs, videotapes, audiotapes and clothing. The council will probably want to examine ways to recycle unwanted spectacles and dead dry-cell batteries.

"We shall be looking not only at what people can recycle but how much they recycle," Councillor Colin Hyams, the cabinet member responsible, told The Hunts Post. "There's a lot of stuff going into grey bins that shouldn't be.

"We need to push our recycling rates higher - other people are catching up.