RECYCLING garden waste and cardboard will be bags easier with West Devon Borough Council?s new green and clean scheme.

From late October, residents in certain areas of the borough will be given two reusable bags to collect garden waste and cardboard. It will be collected and emptied free every fortnight from the kerbside, before being composted.

The new £300,000 project ? funded by the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) ? will be piloted in certain areas first. A decision on where is likely to be made next week. In areas where the scheme is not in place, West Devon?s recycling team will be helping residents with home composting.

The green and clean bags project will run in addition to the council?s green recycling box scheme which is collected weekly with household refuse.

Cllr Paul Ridgers, chairman of the borough?s environment committee, said: ?The people of West Devon are already the top recyclers in Devon, and are amongst the best in the country.

?We already recycle more than a quarter of our waste and we hope that green and clean will mean we can recycle even more.?

In the last year, West Devon has produced less waste per head than anywhere else in the county, reducing the amount of waste it buries ? or land fills ? by more than 7 per cent.

The council is striving towards reaching its Government-set target of recycling 36 per cent of household waste by 2005/06.

Next month the council?s recycling team will be staging a series of roadshows to explain the new scheme.

Giving them a helping hand will be Radio Four gardening celebrity Anne Swithinbank and Devon gardening expert Matt Bishop from the Garden House at Buckland Monachorum, when they officially launch the new scheme on October 1.

The roadshows are being held on Bedford Square, Tavistock on october 1; Safeway in Tavistock on October 2; Somerfield in Okehampton on October 4 and Waitrose in Okehampton on October 7.