A campaign was launched to encourage people to increase the amount to items they are recycling.

The Rescue Me campaign, organised by Recycle Now, urged people to retrieve five recyclable items from their black bins during Recycle Week, which ran from October 14 to October 20.

Despite nine out of 10 people regularly recycling, almost 79 per cent admitted to throwing away recyclable items, such as yoghurt pots, cans, cereal boxes, envelopes, loo rolls, and food waste, into their black bins.

Councillor Julia Huffer, the council's recycling champion, said: “We’ve all done it – popped something into our black bins which really should go inside our green or blue bins.

“To help mark Recycle Week we challenged residents to be a Rescue Me hero and save five recyclable items from their black bin.”

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The Rescue Me campaign aimed to raise public awareness of proper recycling habits and to motivate more frequent recycling of the right items.

The timing of the campaign coincided with a recommendation for East Cambridgeshire district councillors to approve a new waste and recycling collection service.

If approved, the new service would provide residents with black wheeled bins and a weekly food waste collection, alongside the retention and enhancement of the free garden waste and dry recycling service.

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The planned changes aim to benefit both residents and the environment by increasing the district's recycling rate.

Currently, East Cambridgeshire has one of the highest recycling rates in the country, with nearly 60 per cent of waste diverted from landfill.

The district's recycling is transported to a local transfer station, where it is sorted into materials like plastic, paper, cans, and glass, and sold to manufacturers to create new products.

For more information on the new service and recycling, visit the council's website.