Nearly 6,000 Knoxville households are signed up to take part in the City of Knoxville's new city-wide, curbside recycling program at the close of the first week that residents could enroll in the program.

The new program, which is offered at no additional charge to city residents, is set to begin in October.

The single-stream, curbside model makes recycling as easy as throwing away the trash since residents would no longer have to separate recyclable items. Instead they would simply place the recyclable materials into a single container, supplied by the city, and it would be picked up every two weeks by the city's contractor.

Initially the program will be offered to the first 20,000 households that sign up.

As of Friday afternoon some 2,573 people had signed up for the curbside recycling program. Another 3,323 Knoxville residents who are customers of the Waste Connections curbside recycling program are automatically included in the new free program. That raises the total number of households in the city that are signed up for the program to 5,896

The city has been working for several years to develop a city-wide curbside recycling program in response to citizen requests for it and to reduce the amount of material going into the landfill.

Citizens can learn more about the program, or sign up for it, by visiting www.doyourpartwiththecart.com. They can also sign up by simply calling 311.