The Brown Bin Trial
Up to 20,000 households in the East Riding are taking part in a brown bin trial for garden waste. East Riding of Yorkshire Council has been running the trial from March in two areas, Driffield and Haltemprice. Brown bins could eventually be rolled out across the East Riding.
Trial areas
The Driffield trial area includes Hutton Cranswick, Bainton, Middleton on the Wolds, Tibthorpe, Nafferton, Harpham, Kilham, Ruston Parva, Beeford, Brandesburton, Seaton Sigglesthorn, Catwick, Catfoss, Arnold and Long Riston.
In the Haltemprice area, brown bins will be delivered to households in Anlaby, Kirk Ella, West Ella, Swanland, North Ferriby and Willerby.
Cllr. Stephen Parnaby presenting the brown bins
Target 45+
The trial is an important part of the council’s Target 45+ campaign aimed at encouraging residents to reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill by recycling or composting at least 45 per cent of it.
Failure to achieve this target by 2010 could result in the council being faced with Government imposed penalties and fines of about £9million.
The brown bins are for grass cuttings, hedge and shrub trimmings, plants and flowers. The collected waste will be composted.
Collections
The bins will be collected fortnightly, April to November, and monthly during December to March. This will be in addition to the normal weekly green bin collection and the four-weekly blue bin collection.
Cllr Parnaby : "We are listening."
Councillor Stephen Parnaby, leader of the council, said: “This service shows we are listening to residents as it is what they have been asking for, a convenient way of managing their garden waste.
“Garden waste is a major issue for this council. It makes up nearly a third of all the waste going into the green household bin.
“That is a lot of garden waste going to landfill and we will soon no longer be able to afford to do that.”
He added: “I feel sure this launch will mirror that of the blue recycling bin across the East Riding two years ago. Since then collections of paper, cans and plastic bottles have helped us treble our recycling rate.”
Kerbside collection of garden waste in the brown bins started in April 2008.
Last summer the council promoted the ‘don’t bin it, compost it’ message, urging residents not to dump garden waste in the green bins.
Despite this, green waste continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing the council. The recent waste composition survey showed 27 per cent of the contents of the green bins was still grass cuttings, hedge trimmings and branches.
