“We thought the first cycle would be heavy in terms of recycling because people would have been getting material together before the new scheme started. Even so, despite doubling the collection vehicles we had under the previous red box arrangement, the response has been huge and it has been a struggle to keep up. We have had so much card, cardboard and paper that has tried to send a crew out ahead of the Sort-it lorry just to deal with that.

“This in turn has caused some confusion from people who see the first vehicle and think that nobody is coming for the rest of their red box items. The other crews are usually following the same day.

“Even having done that, in a minority of areas, we have not always met our scheduled recycling collection days. We do generally catch up the next day - but it is not acceptable, and causes knock-on problems for other areas.

“Residents need to know their red boxes will be collected the day they put them out. We now have two extra crews, are working through the backlog and from Friday everything should be on schedule.

“The contractors have also been told in no uncertain terms that they must take all recycling. It is not the case unsorted recycling will be left, although the more sorting residents do the quicker the rounds will be. We have learned from the first cycle and the number of roads experiencing problems had decreased, although I appreciate this is no consolation to households who have had problems.

“I would urge people to contact us with issues - I know the phones have been difficult, but you can get through now.”

Mrs Webb said more than ten tons of recycling had been rejected this week due to contamination in green bins.

She added: “The first week we had no problems, but if quantities of anything other than green waste or food get into a load it will be rejected, undoing the hard work of everyone else. The actions of two or three people may contaminate the efforts of a street.”