The new record-breaking figures announced this week means Peterborough City Council is exceeding government recycling targets.

The latest figure overtakes last year's total of 46.6 per cent, which placed Peterborough as the top unitary authority in the country.

"This is an excellent performance," said councillor Wayne Fitzgerald, the city council's cabinet member for the environment.

"Residents are using the city council's three-bin kerbside collection service to recycle or compost even more of their discarded household and garden materials."

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"We have set a target to raise household recycling rates to more than 65 per cent by 2020, reducing the environmental damage caused when rotting rubbish in landfill sites produces methane, a potent global warming gas.

"These figures show that the majority of residents are making the recycling system work really well, by separating out clean, dry materials to be used as a resource to create new products.

"However, there are still a few who contaminate their bins with materials that are not suitable for recycling.

"So I appeal to these people to join the majority who have become enthusiastic recyclers and treat these materials as a valuable resource."

Household green bins are used to recycle dry products such as paper, card, plastic bottles, tin and aluminium cans, drink cartons and, since March this year, glass bottles and jars. Brown bins are used to collect organic garden materials such as grass cuttings and shrub prunings that are composted.

Recycling contracts officer for the city council Amy Nebel said the authority was continually working on projects that would encourage residents to use existing recycling facilities more fully and to extend the range of materials that can be recycled.

She said: "Other European countries have higher recycling rates than the UK, and we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to keep raising our performance if we are to meet future challenging landfill reduction targets."

Under a European Union landfill reduction directive, Peterborough must reduce volumes of biodegradable rubbish being landfilled to just 34,135 tonnes – 75 per cent of 1995 levels – by 2009/10.

The target reduces to 22,736 tonnes (50 per cent of the 1995 total) by 2012/13 and to just 15,909 tonnes (35 per cent of the 1995 total) by 2019/20. If the authority fails to hit the targets it will incur fines of £150 for every tonne of "over target" rubbish being landfilled.