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13
May 2023
North Yorkshire councillors voice frustration at 20 year delay to food waste collection service
North Yorkshire Councillors have voiced frustration at proposals to delay the introduction of a separate food waste collection service for another 20 years.
The delay has happened due to the government’s failure to state how much funding it would give the service.
Several members of the council’s executive underlined that the recommendation to delay the service until up to 2043 did not reflect their determination to rapidly reduce carbon emissions.
The urgent calls for government action appear to mark a significant shift in policy for the authority. Four years ago its leadership stated it was opposed to the introduction of a separate food waste collection service.
In 2019 the council stated it did not support the separate collections as it already recovered organic matter from residual waste at the county’s Allerton Park energy-from-waste plant in a “very cost-effective way”.
When a year later, the government committed to rolling out separate household food waste collection across the country by 2023, 51% of local authorities already collected food waste separately.
A meeting of the council’s current executive heard how separate collections could realise up to a 3,300-tonne reduction in carbon emissions a year compared to the current arrangements.
By collecting food waste separately, the council could increase the amount that can be converted into green electricity using an anaerobic digester. The delay would mean the carbon equivalent of an extra 18 million kilometres of diesel car emissions every year.
Although the council has effectively been given consent by Whitehall mandarins to delay implementing one of its flagship carbon cutting schemes due to its waste disposal contract running until 2043, the authority’s executive members said they wanted the service launched long before that “backstop position”.
Read more:
- Weekly food waste collections in Harrogate district to be delayed over costs
- ‘Few teething issues’ with North Yorkshire Council launch, say political leaders
However, officers told the meeting the council had received “no further clarity” over government funding for introducing the new food waste collection service, saying the authority faced a bill of anything up to £6.4m annually.
Climate change boss Cllr Greg White said while council wanted to launch the separate collections with a county-wide overhaul of bin collections in 2027, it faced “very significant additional costs” over the separate food waste service.
He said:
Other executive members said the authority, which is already facing having to cut a 30m annual deficit, needed “crystal clear” figures from the government before it could launch separate food collections and emphasised they had been left facing a choice of cutting carbon or funding other council services.
Cllr Simon Myers said:
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