A PLAN to encourage people to recycle plastic waste has been dumped by Wycombe District Council because it would have cost too much.

The council wanted ten of its 50 recycling sites in the district to have special banks in which people could leave plastic. It set aside £22,000 a year for it, and asked firms tendering for the district rubbish collection service to include collection of plastic in their bids.

But when tenders came in they were all about four times over the estimate.

Recycling plastic is expensive because it is so bulky and so light; very few councils have schemes.

Chris Oliver, chairman of the council's planning, environment and transportation committee, said it was a pity, but there wasn't enough money.

The government sets councils recycling targets, and in Wycombe, by 2003/4, the amount of household rubbish recycled must go up from 11 per cent to 20 per cent. It also has targets to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill sites.

Garden waste, which can be made into compost, and paper, which can be recycled, account for more than half of what goes into bins, so dealing with them are key issues for the council.

Plastic is only about ten per cent and is at the bottom end of the recycling priority list.

In Wycombe district, people can leave out their paper to be collected by Ecovert who run the council's street cleaning services.

In Hazlemere where they have been given special boxes to put the paper in, the amount left out has doubled.

"There's huge potential," said Richard Powell, head of engineering services with the council.

Wycombe also encourages people to make compost at home from green waste, by selling cut price composting bins at garden centres from time to time.

People can also use county council household waste sites.