PUBLIC protests have forced town hall bosses to consider including cardboard and plastic food pots in the recyclable waste collection.

They hope that this will make the scheme less controversial, as families have less to jam into their "regular" bins.

The complaint has been one of many concerning the new service, under which normal waste is collected one week and recyclables like paper, glass, tins and garden waste the following week.

Mr Mike Savage, borough operational services officer, said the council had now dealt with most requests for extra black boxes and waste audits.

"The main issue now seems to be the balance between recyclable materials collected one week and the residual waste the following week," he said.

"People are telling us that if we took cardboard and plastic containers such as yoghurt pots and butter/margarine tubs in the recyclables week they could see the alternate week scheme working much better, as more families would be able to cope with the volume of waste left."

The council says that the scheme is yielding impressive results, collecting 275 tonnes a week of recyclable waste, up from 100 tonnes when it was launched in March, and seven times the amount collected last year when only paper was picked up from the kerbside.

Some of the increase is attributed to the rise in garden waste at this time of year, but bosses say that the amounts of all materials collected has increased. To the end of April, more than 700 tonnes of garden waste had been composted, almost 600 tonnes of paper collected and more than 200 tonnes of glass, tins, plastic bottles and textiles recycled.