UNSCRUPULOUS bars are increasing their profits by dumping huge volumes of used bottles at residents’ recycling banks, it has been claimed.

A meeting of Richmondshire District Council’s corporate board heard businesses had been seen using green banks for waste they should be paying to dispose of.

Richmond West member Councillor Linda Curran said while their kerbside recycling collectors were good at reducing potential for contamination, the same standards were not being met at the authority’s green waste banks.

She said the waste banks were becoming overly full, leading to people not being careful about where they deposited their recycling, and the issue was being aggravated by firms using the waste banks. Cllr Curran said: “At Christmas the glass recycling was full of hundreds and hundreds of exactly the same bottles. No household has hundreds of the same bottle, but pubs tend to buy the same brand. We have got to tackle this.”

Corporate director Colin Dales collections had been increased and a mobile CCTV camera had been brought in to identify people “not using them in a common sense way”. He said: “Every business should be able to show they have a licence with a commercial contractor. A possible next step would be to speed up the checking of these licences.”