THE council is getting tough on people who ignore its efforts to recycle waste paper - it will refuse to take their rubbish away.

Craven District Council has relaunched its "blue bag" scheme delivering thousands to houses without a separate recycling bin.

But with the bags comes a warning - "if any recyclable paper is found in your green wheeled bin, your bin will not be emptied."

The council is being forced to adopt its hard stance to meet tough new domestic waste recycling targets.

If Craven does not meet them, it will be penalised financially, meaning heavier council tax bills for all householders.

"We have to be practical - we can't expect our refuse collectors to go through every bin looking for paper that hasn't been recycled," said Craven's head of waste management Neville Allan.

"However, if there are obvious signs that recycling material is contained in the normal rubbish (green wheeled) bin then it will not be emptied.

"It then becomes the householder's responsibility to remove any recycled paper from their bin if they wish it to be emptied by the council.

"This year we have high statutory targets to meet for recycling and we can only reach those targets by relying on residents to recycle."

The council's scheme collecting waste paper in a tough, plastic, blue bag was launched in conjunction with Yorwaste, the county council-owned company which runs the landfill site at Skibeden.

But it fell into abeyance when the two could not agree a price to continue the service and the council is now running its own scheme.

Blue bags have been issued to householders who do not have a "brown bin" for garden waste or a "blue bin" for glass, plastic and paper.

The blue bags will take newspapers, magazines, junk mail, yellow pages and catalogues but not cardboard and envelopes.

The council's move comes as new figures reveal a surge in recycling in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Recycling of household waste has doubled in the last four years according to new provisional figures published by Defra.

The figures show that English households recycled more than a fifth of their waste in 2004/05. Residents in Yorkshire and the Humber managed to recycle 19 per cent of their household waste, up from 15 per cent the previous year.

Performance around the country varies with on average, residents of the North East recycling the least (16 per cent) and people in the east of England recycling the most (29 per cent). The greatest leap has been in the East Midlands, up seven per cent on last year to 27 per cent.

Local Environmental Quality Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "We've doubled the amount in just four years. These figures prove how much more people understand the importance of recycling compared to even just four years ago.

"There's no doubt we can be proud of our progress to date, but now it's time to build on that and start catching up with some of Europe's top recyclers."

One of the organisations tasked with improving the UK's resource efficiency WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme), thinks the key to recycling success lies in maintaining the momentum.

WRAP chief executive Jennie Price said: "We all care about the environment in one way or another, and the great thing about recycling is that it's really easy and we can all make an individual contribution."

She added: "Nearly 80 per cent of England's households now have doorstep recycling schemes - now we all need to make sure we use them."

Defra confirmed that it expects that all local authorities to maintain and improve their recycling levels in future years.