Residents urged to recycle more

People living in Windsor and Maidenhead have been urged to recycle more or face rises in council tax.

The call to residents came as the cost of sending waste to landfill increased by £8 per tonne.

The Royal Borough council said it now costs the authority £58 to dispose of every tonne of waste, of which £32 was landfill tax.

The council said the less it sent to such sites, the easier it would be to keep council tax rises to a minimum.

The authority sent 45,000 tonnes of waste to landfill in 2007/8, which cost £1m in landfill tax.

Councillor Paul Etherington said the government had made it clear that landfill tax would keep rising by £8 a tonne until 2011, so the less the authority sent, the less it paid in tax.

He said: "Continuing to send waste to landfill is just not an option at these prices.

"It is not only hard on the pocket but is also completely unsustainable and severely damaging to our environment."