A bid is being made in Moray to cut the amount of waste that is wrongly recycled.
A recent investigation revealed that about 40% of household waste left at the region’s main recycling centre was not being put in the right containers.
To coincide with National Recycle Week, which begins on Monday, council officers will be on hand at the Chanonry recycling centre in Elgin to advise the public.
The local authority pays £80 in tax for every tonne that goes for burial at the Dallachy landfill site.
It has been estimated that it may be paying as much as £500,000 a year in unnecessary taxes due to the people’s failure to recycle properly.
A spokesman for the council’s recycling team said: “The most common materials to be wrongly put into the landfill skip are clothes and textiles.
“The audit found that just under 40st of these materials had been put in the household waste skip instead of the textile banks that are also on site.
“Clothes of any condition can be placed into these textile banks and any that are not good enough to be worn again are recycled into new products.
“If sent to landfill these materials break down and create high levels of greenhouse gases, so it is very important to make sure that none are put into the landfill skip.”
The local authority also says that up to 40% of what families are throwing in their wheelie bins every week could be recycled.
The bulk of waste wrongly put in the council’s green bins is food.
Landfill tax, which was introduced by the Westminster government in 1996, has increased dramatically recently.
In March 2011, it was increased from £56 to £64 per tonne, and has since gone up again to £80.