A GREEN strategy has been set out highlighting ways of making part of the North-East more environmentally friendly.

A 44-page environmental blueprint, launched by Middlesbrough Borough Council, includes a radical aim of reducing the volume of cars travelling into the town.

The council wants firms to come up with "green travel plans", encouraging workers to use public transport, share lifts or cycle or walk to work.

The aim is for green transport plans to be adopted by half the town's employers by 2005.

Councillor Ken Hall, Commissioner for the Environment, said: "We are looking at the environment in the broadest sense, the impact of health, work and leisure as well as the physical fabric of Middlesbrough.''

Development of a car parking strategy and reductions in pollution from cars form other aspects of proposals for an ambitious sustainable transport system.

Another key element is improving indoor air quality in houses. A council spokesman said houses with poor or no ventilation could be a health problem, particularly if people smoked.

There is to be a renewed emphasis on recycling, with fortnightly pilot pap-er and magazine collections from 30,000 homes undertaken by a private company. If the trials succeed, the whole town will be included.

Work schemes are to be devised for the long-term unemployed.

Another priority will be promoting the town's new cleaner image, dispelling some national misconceptions about the town's environment, views which are shared by some local people.

There will be more risk assessments on contaminated land, a drive to reduce noise, regeneration schemes and improvements to four community parks.

Improving health and wellbeing are other themes in the plan, with residents to be given more of a say in the management of their communities while greater vironmental awareness will be taught in schools.