COUNCIL chiefs have urged residents to put their recycling in the right places to stop carton recycling becoming a thing of the past.

Cotswold District Council has to manually remove a backlog of plastics, cardboard and paper every fortnight at Rissington Road Car Park in Bourton-on-the-Water, as they are being put into the food and drink cartons recycling bank.

This is a lengthy process, and the carton recycling bins could be taken away for good if the situation does not improve.

The council’s head of environmental services, Claire Locke, said: "We are very grateful to residents for recycling their food and drink cartons at Rissington Road in the large bank and supporting our commitment to recycling. "However, even though the other materials deposited are recyclable, there is no easy means of separating them out from the carton material.

"This causes problems for the contractor responsible for the bank, and also leads to extra clean-up work and cost for our cleansing service provider - Ubico Ltd.

"With this in mind, I would urge people to keep up the good work on recycling food and drink cartons, but please remember to use our kerbside recycling collection service for other recyclables.

"Otherwise, the carton facility might have to be removed permanently because the other items deposited contaminate the recycling process.

"For the record, aside from the carton facility, there are also separate recycling banks at Rissington Road for paper, books, glass, textiles, and tapes and discs."