A £14m scheme to make Medway more green has been launched this week.

Since Monday, all rubbish – including recycling and garden materials – is now being collected weekly across the Towns.

Previously blue and white bags and the brown wheelie bins were collected on alternate weeks.

Medway Council has also delivered thousands of small food compost caddies to every home in the Towns. These are designed to sit on your kitchen worktop and be filled with leftovers and other kitchen waste, before being emptied into the large brown bins.

The changes come into force after Medway Council was awarded a £14m government grant.

As part of the scheme the council is launching a crackdown on people not sorting their waste, which it is claimed costs £340,000 a year.

The biggest problem is people not separating paper and card, which should go in blue bags, from other recyclable material, which goes in white bags and clear sacks.

Chiefs originally planned to leave repeat offenders’ rubbish in the streets, but that plan was ditched in a swift U-turn by cabinet members.

Instead the council said binmen will collect the bags but explain the rules to individual residents.

The changes to rubbish collections in the Towns have received a mixed reaction from residents.

A straw poll by the Messenger in Chatham High Street revealed that just under two-thirds thought the new system was a good idea, while four out of 10 disagreed.

Andrew Smith, 44, an IT programmer from Gillingham, said: “We will give it a go, but I’m not happy with the way they do recycling. I’ve lived in the States where you have one recycling bag for everything and they sort it out at their end.

“I feel more and more local councils are pushing more and more on the residents. Next they’ll tell us we have to get rid of our rubbish ourselves.

“Medway is not a particularly young area either, so this will make it harder for older people.”

Mum Louise Groves, 29, from Chatham, added: “I heard it is becoming weekly, which is better I suppose. I have a lot of kids, so we have a lot of rubbish.

“It can be a bit of a hassle having to sort it though. We don’t recycle much at the moment because we don’t get any recycling bags.”