Harrogate district households are to get up to four wheelie bins each as part of a new system in North Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire Council is standardising waste collections after inheriting different systems from the seven district councils it replaced, including Harrogate Borough Council, last year.

Under the new system, each household in the Harrogate district will have three bins each or four if they pay for the garden waste service.

The only bin that will remain the same locally is the grey-lid residual waste bin. 

The blue bags will be replaced by blue-lid bins for paper and card; red-lid bins will replace the blue-lid bins for dry mixed recycling and people who pay for garden waste collections will see their brown-lid bins replaced by green-lid bins.

All the bins will have grey bodies.

A council report explaining the changes says the chosen bin colour scheme is becoming increasingly common among local authorities, with Milton Keynes and Cheshire West Councils recently implementing it.

Regarding the impact on the Harrogate district, the report says:

The report says a procurement exercise for the new bins will be undertaken shortly. It adds the financial implications of this “will be covered under a separate report”.

It previously indicated the roll-out of 240-litre bins will cost £8 million.

The frequency of collections is not confirmed in the report.

The changes at a glance

Harrogate district households currently have grey-lid bins for residual waste, blue-lid bins for dry mixed recycling and blue bags for paper and card recycling. Households that pay for garden waste also have brown-lid bins.

Under the new system, households will get:

1 Grey-lid bin for residual waste

2 Green-lid bin for garden waste (if they pay to subscribe)

3 Red-lid bins for dry mixed recycling

4 Blue-lid bins for paper and card.