Sideways News

The scheme covers materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic and glass

Households in Windsor and Maidenhead are to be rewarded with vouchers and discounts for recycling in a bid to promote sustainable living.

Almost 4,000 homes are participating in the council scheme, which uses microchips inside wheelie bins to monitor how much waste is put into them.

Bins are then automatically scanned and weighed as they are loaded onto refuse trucks and households are awarded points accordingly.

These points can then be redeemed for up to £130 of vouchers every year for shops such as Marks & Spencer, Vision Express and Subway.

The initiative is the brainchild of US firm RecycleBank, which runs similar schemes on the other side of the Atlantic.

It rewards homes for recycling materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal and there is no need to sort through these items and separate them into different groups.

Liam Maxwell, a Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead councillor, said: "The appetite to recycle more is clearly there.

"Using the carrot, not the stick, is our way of energising the community and bringing meaningful benefits to households and local businesses."

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over 100 million tonnes of waste is generated in the UK alone each year, most of which currently ends up in landfill.

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