FIFTEEN thousand homes across Craven will help pioneer a kerbside paper recycling scheme.

Yorwaste, in conjunction with Craven District Council, will distribute blue sacks to the homes to fill with waste paper which will be collected fortnightly.

Head of operations at the council Greg Robinson said the objective was to increase the district recycling rates to meet statutory targets.

Yorwaste hopes to collect 600 tonnes of paper from this scheme in 2003/04 beginning in August, and 900 tonnes for every full year after that.

But Mr Robinson said the scheme could not work for every property and will serve 15,000 homes in the most densely populated areas - Skipton, Settle and South Craven. Around 7,000 houses will not be involved.

At the community services committee Coun Richard Welch said the scheme was to be commended. He was concerned that not all villages would be covered and hoped that the recycling scheme at Settle Swimming Pool, which raises funds for the pool, would not be adversely affected.

A report to the council stated that kerbside recycling schemes tended to attract new people to recycling and those who already took their waste paper to recycling centres would continue to do so.

Coun John Sayer asked whether those companies who sent out junk mail could just be asked to send the leaflets straight to Yorwaste!

Mr Robinson said Yorwaste still had to work out the route the collection vehicle would take and exactly which homes would be included. He added that it would be uneconomical to collect from every home because the distance travelled between all the villages would accrue costs.

He added that most people in the district lived within one kilometre of a recycling centre where people were being encouraged to take their waste paper if they were not involved in a kerbside scheme.

Coun Mike Doyle who was there as an advisor on waste management said this was just the start of the district's bid to recycle more. He said the next step was to look at waste minimisation and influence commercial organisations in the area.

Coun Paul English said you only had to look at the modern Easter eggs to see how much was chocolate and how much packaging would be thrown away.