Cartoniadi, a municipal competition, will take place in Rome from 1 - 27 February. Promoted by AMA, the citys department responsible for the collection of refuse, and Comieco, the national consortium for the recycling of packaging and waste paper, the competition is to see which municipality can increase the percentage of paper and cardboard it can collect for recycling, compared to the amount it collected in February of last year.

All 19 municipalities will take part and all residents are invited to collect up their paper and packaging rubbish and take it to one of the 11.000 special white containers placed around the city.

The three municipalities with the greatest increase in paper rubbish collected will win cash prizes of 150.000 for the winner, 75.000 for the second place and 50.000 for the third place. The money is to be spent on social and environmental projects in the individual municipalities.

The organisers of the competition have reminded Romes residents that they throw away over 70 kilos of paper packaging each every year and that if every resident took an egg box, a newspaper and a magazine, three empty pasta boxes and two paper bags to a recycling point every month, the recyclable paper collected in the city would increase by 100,000 tons in a year.