PEOPLE will be asked to recycle more as Bradford Council looks at ways to reduce the amount of rubbish the district produces and cut the annual £13 million cost of dealing with it.

The Council may ban raised wheelie bin lids and refuse to take rubbish left at the side of them.

Next week senior councillors will meet to discuss a new system which aims to reduce and recycle as much household waste as possible.

Meanwhile a search is ongoing for a new treatment and disposal contract to dealt with what remains - but that could take up to 18 months to sort out.

The new deal would take over from temporary arrangements put in place after the Government pulled its funding from Bradford and Calderdale’s joint waste management project in 2013 shortly before it was due to start.

Councillor Andrew Thornton, the Council's executive member for environment, sport and sustainability, said: "Every tonne of waste sent for disposal costs council tax-payers more than £80 and last year there were 165,000 tonnes of it, so it’s a huge bill.

"Our new waste strategy aims to cut that bill by getting more households recycling more and reducing the amount of waste that ends up in the green wheelie bin."

The new waste contractor would manage up to 135,000 tonnes of household rubbish each year for the next ten to 15 years. It involves a combination of pre-treatment, which could be at the Council's Bowling Back Lane site, and thermal treatment at a merchant plant, which charges to take both local authority and private waste.

It would take at least 80 per cent of the district’s waste away from landfill.

The Council's executive will be told that 16 different waste treatment companies have shown an interest in the contract.

A report on the plans also says that £13 million was spent in 2013/14 on treating and disposing of the waste the Council collected.

It also says that increasing economic activity and predicted hikes in population and housing will mean more waste is created over the coming years.

Changes to made to recycling in summer 2013, following a £4.6m Government grant, are expected to boost recycling to 33 per cent by 2017, from 26 per cent in 2013.

The changes include keeping the monthly green garden waste collections - with the addition of a wheeled bin rather than a green sack, introducing the kerbside collection of plastic bottles and increasing the collection of recycling wheelie bins from monthly to fortnightly.