PEOPLE who fail to abide by stricter bin collection rules are facing fines of £60, as Bradford Council tries to cut the amount of waste being burnt or sent to landfill.

New restrictions which bar people from leaving extra bin bags for collection began rolling out across Bradford yesterday, after a pilot project ran in Keighley.

The changes mean Bradford Council will only collect one general-waste green bin per household each week, and lids must be shut.

In Keighley, the move saw recycling rates increase by 10 per cent, with more than 4,000 new recycling bins delivered and 50 fines so far sent out to those who continued to ignore the new rules after getting reminder letters.

And more changes are due from April 2017, when the council will move to fortnightly general waste collections to save cash and boost recycling rates further.

Councillor Imran Khan, whose portfolio at the council includes both waste management and sustainability matters, said currently 50 per cent of the district's waste was recycled, but he had ambitions to get this to more than 70 per cent.

He said this was important not just for environmental reasons but because burning waste or sending it to landfill was very expensive.

He said: "Just a 10 per cent increase would save us somewhere in the region of £1m. How much money are we currently burning and throwing into landfill?"

Cllr Khan (Lab, Bowling and Barkerend) said over the next 12 months, he wanted to investigate ways of expanding the types of materials the council collects for recycling.

And he said he was also hoping to find ways of making recycling at home easier, saying his ambition was to get to a point where people didn't have to sort their recycling into different compartments as they currently do.

The chairman of a committee which scrutinises the council's recycling performance welcomed the progress.

Councillor Martin Love (Green, Shipley), who chairs the environment and waste overview and scrutiny committee, said: "I'm pleased that Cllr Khan has got these sorts of ambitions and will do everything I can to help him realise them.

"It is a difficult one, because people will be used to a different way of operating, but given the costs involved in disposing of people's waste and the benefits you can get from recycling - both environmental and financial - we have got to move to getting stricter with people.

"A huge number of people in the district already recycle everything they possibly can and do a great job in that respect and they should be thanked and applauded, but we really ought to move on to those who don't."