DIRTY nappies and food waste are among the items wrongly put in recycling bins across Pendle, costing taxpayers thousands of pounds.

And now Pendle Council is taking a tough line with people who are putting rubbish in their recycling bins.

Bosses at the local authority have launched a crackdown on people not recycling properly after recent issues cost taxpayers more than £20,000.

Borough waste and recycling co-ordinator Carole Taylor said: “The amount of contamination in some of our blue bins for paper and card is totally unacceptable,”

“We’ve just had 156 tonnes of paper and card rejected for recycling because it was mixed up with other rubbish including nappies and food waste.

“This is almost a month’s worth of paper and card recycling which has been wasted and put into landfill.

“It costs £130 per tonne for landfill. So for a 156 tonne amount the cost to Pendle taxpayers is a staggering £20,280."

Recycling crews will be stepping up their efforts to check blue bins for contamination.

“They will be putting stickers on the bins asking people who’ve put the wrong things in the wrong bin to remove them,” warned Carole.

“If people put things we can’t recycle in their recycling bins we won’t empty them until they’ve removed the wrong things which contaminate our loads.”

Cllr Mohammed Iqbal, leader of Pendle Council, said: “The vast majority of people in Pendle recycle and we are not going to allow a minority of careless people to spoil our efforts to protect the environment.

“Pendle Council has pledged to tackle the environmental crisis which is affecting us locally, nationally and globally and declared a Climate Emergency at its full Council meeting in July 2019.

“Recycling is an important way for us all to do our bit to reduce waste in Pendle."