A councillor's "mind has been blown" after learning of recycling rule changes in her own borough. 

Stockton Council no longer supplies blue bags for paper recycling at home - with white Hessian sacks accepting all materials apart from glass.

But this came as news to Cllr Louise Baldock at Monday’s place select committee (February 24). 

Cllr Baldock added: “Does that mean that if you have a white bag, instead of standing there for ages thinking 'is this cardboard or paper?' - we can just stuff the blue bag in the white bag?”

Council officers told the member for Parkfield and Oxbridge she could. 

The authority’s white sacks accept plastic, cardboard, cans and paper - with a pocket for recyclable paper at the front. 

Plastic bottles, yoghurt pots and cartons are among items accepted while hard rigid plastics, plastic meat trays and carrier bags are not recyclable. 

Cereal boxes, greetings cards and brown cardboard are also fine but pizza boxes are forbidden. 

Meanwhile, existing blue bags will still be emptied as normal.

Officer Craig Willows explained why the white sacks were brought in - and why blue bags were being phased out. 

He added: “The blue bags were introduced when the sale of newspapers was more buoyant and popular. 

“Over the past ten years the sale of newspapers has gone down quite significantly - so what we now find is that, for convenience, the white bag can be used for everything apart from glass.

“Everything else goes in the back (of the wagon)."

Mr Willows said a "state-of-the-art" facility at J&B Recycling, in Hartlepool, then separated out paper plastic and cardboard at its factory.

But Cllr Baldock wanted to be crystal clear on the rules.

She added: “We need to tell this to the whole of the borough - that they no longer need to stand there and separate out blue and white bag stuff because it’s all going in the same aperture in the back of the lorry.

“It’s only the glass that needs to be separated.

“Am I the only person that didn’t know this?”

“It’s good news - and it’s mind-blowing.”

Earlier in the meeting, Mr Willows told the committee that levels of non-collections of bins in the borough were “extremely low” - and the new 110 litre sacks had proved “very popular”.