A report approved by Cabinet last month recommended a number of steps to improve the city’s recycling rate of 33 percent. Andrew Wright reports.

Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson announced the drive as a response to illegal dumping blighting the city’s neighbourhoods and to residents that do not recycle responsibly.

The drive includes the introduction of larger recycling sacks, an expansion of weekly recycling services for city centre apartment blocks, piloting weekly recycling, and a doubling of the number of teams tackling flytipping.

In addition, the Mayor has asked for an emphasis on tackling residents who choose not to recycle or manage their waste in a responsible way, or who let their dogs foul the streets.

It is estimated that 21,000 tonnes of recyclable goods are needlessly going to landfill each year because residents are placing it in a purple bin or black sacks rather than the blue recycling bin, reportedly costing the tax payer around £1.2 million per year.

Mayor Anderson said: “While we have made huge progress on improving recycling over the last few years, responsible citizens are being undermined by some residents who are putting waste in the wrong bin.

“We recently had a case in Old Swan where an entire day’s recycling collections were so contaminated with non-recyclable items that the load was rejected at the recycling plant. Instead, it had to be sent to landfill, doubling the cost of processing and disposing of the waste and hitting council tax payers in the pocket.

“We have a challenging recycling target of 55 percent to hit by 2020 and so we have to think creatively about what we can do.

“I have asked officers to come up with a series of enforcement measures that we can use to drive the required change in behaviour in those residents that fail to responsibly manage their waste and for the Cabinet member to bring a report setting out in detail the steps we will take to tackle poor waste management and other environmental crime.”